UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


P. 


STRIFE  OF  SYSTEMS  AND 
PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

AN  ESSAY  IN  PHILOSOPHY 


BY 


WILMON  HENRY  SHELDON 

STONE  PROFESSOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 
IN  DARTMOUTH  COLLEGE 


CAMBRIDGE 
HARVARD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON:  HUMPHREY  MILFORD 
OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


COPYRIGHT,  1918 
HARVARD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


PREFACE 

XTOTWITHSTANDING  the  length  of  the  investigation 
i-  ^1  which  occupies  them,  the  following  pages  offer  a  simple 
enough  result.    Their  burden  is  but  one  idea,  albeit  an  idea 
with  a  positive  and  a  negative  side.    The  positive  side  we 
discover  when  we  learn  that  throughout  the  range  of  human 
thought  and  deed  there  recurs,  in  a  million  different  shapes, 
OT    one  and  the  same  problem,  viz.,  to  maintain  the  integrity 
S    of  a  given  thing,  person,  principle,  institution,  in  the  modi- 
fications which  the  environment  imposes  upon  it.    In  the 
H  dialect  of  technical  philosophy  this  is  called  the  problem  of 
j  harmonizing  the  principle  of  external  relations  with  that  of 
internal  relations;  it  might  with  equal  truth  be  styled  the 
reconciliation  of  Platonism  and  pragmatism,  of  idealism  and 
realism,  of  "  static  "  and  "  dynamic  "  views,  or  a  dozen 
other  names.    For  it  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  those  contro- 
5   versies  waged  by  philosophers  in  the  long  history  of  their 
|  discipline.    Speaking  most  broadly,  the  difficulties  of  think- 
;  ing  and  living  do  not  lie  in  the  creation  of  novel  forms,  in 
^  discovery  and  invention;    these  arise  spontaneously  yet 
^  inevitably  if  they  are  allowed  to  do  so.   Reality  creates  with- 
out trouble  or  effort;  what  prevents  man  from  understand- 
ing this  and  from  doing  the  like  himself,  is  his  perennial 
tendency  to  oppose  the  old  to  the  new,  the  static  to  the 
dynamic,  abstract  to  concrete,  system  to  opportunity.    To 
see  the  independent  right  of  each,  as  well  as  their  mutual 
consistency  and  support,  is  in  fact  to  know  the  creative 
principle  itself.    Without  such  knowledge,  every  fertile  dis- 
covery, every  new  plan  of  life,  is  but  a  prick  to  further  strife; 
with  it,  one  may  understand  how  the  parts  of  the  universe 
deploy  into  one  another  and  give  rise  to  ever-increasing 


31S093 


iv  PREFACE 

novelties.  The  deepest  trait  of  reality,  in  short,  that  which 
makes  it  the  moving,  productive  thing  it  is,  is  just  this  mar- 
riage of  two  principles  whose  apparent  hostility  has  con- 
stituted the  continual  frustration  of  man's  effort  to  map  the 
universe. 

But  though  the  knowledge  of  the  creative  principle  is 
requisite  for  an  understanding  of  the  specific  structure  of 
reality,  and  though  it  will  explain  more  of  that  structure 
than  the  present  volume  can  show,  such  knowledge  is  not 
enough  for  the  purposes  of  human  thought  and  practice. 
Herein  lies  the  negative  side  of  the  above.  Another  sort  of 
knowledge  must  be  added;  it  is  afforded  by  the  special 
sciences  and  by  practical  experience.  While  the  human 
mind  remains  liable  to  mistakes  in  reasoning  and  to  pre- 
conceived opinion,  men  can  operate  successfully  with  the 
fundamental  principle  only  after  they  have  empirically 
ascertained  the  details  to  which  it  is  to  apply.  Without 
such  acquaintance,  the  general  rule  is  as  likely  to  mislead  as 
to  enlighten.  The  particular  working  of  the  rule  cannot 
usually  be  known  before  the  occasion  presents  itself;  and 
when  it  does  so,  we  need  both  an  open-minded  empiricism 
and  a  resolute  will  to  ensure  the  desirable  application.  The 
rival  claims  of  individual  and  society,  of  religion  and  science, 
of  dogma  and  free  thought,  of  discipline  and  liberty,  must 
indeed  be  adjusted  by  the  aid  of  the  first  principle  —  cannot 
otherwise  be  adjusted;  but  the  adjustment  may  not  be 
carried  through  without  expert  knowledge  also  of  the 
conditions  in  each  particular  issue. 

The  writer  expresses  his  thanks  to  the  Editors  of  the 
Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods  for 
permission  to  reprint  in  Chapter  I,  parts  of  an  article  in  that 
Journal,  vol.  xii,  pp.  5-16. 

W.  H.  S. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

THE  GREAT  PROBLEM 3 

The  natural  task  of  every  one,  to  find  the  best  means  of  lifting  the 
whole  load  of  man  —  how  discover  such  means  ?  —  needs  of  man 
considered  —  grouped  into  cognitive  and  practical,  long-run  and 
immediate  —  long-run  cognitive  the  most  inclusive  needs,  nearest 
to  initial  task  —  attempt  to  satisfy  these  is  philosophy  —  phi- 
losophy would  map  the  universe  on  broad  lines,  both  for  the  sake 
of  knowledge  and  as  a  practical  guide  —  its  choice  imperative 
upon  those  who  are  free  —  why  so  often  rejected  —  material  and 
method  of  philosophical  inquiry. 

CHAPTER  II 

THE  PHILOSOPHIC  DISEASE,  AND  RESTATEMENT  OF  THE 
PROBLEM 23 

We  turn  for  results  to  present-day  philosophy  —  but  it  has  no 
consensus  of  experts  —  attempts  to  explain  away  the  failure  — 
some  radical  fallacy  or  malady  in  the  human  mind  is  indicated, 
to  remove  which  must  be  our  utmost  endeavour  —  studying  the 
chief  types  of  system  we  must  seek  the  source  of  opposition  — 
the  diagnosis  and  cure  of  the  disease  would  automatically  furnish 
the  solution  of  our  initial  task. 

CHAPTER  IH 
THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM 38 

No  types  unmixed,  but  all  influential  —  subjectivism  defined  — 
emotional  and  practical  grounds  for  it  —  the  logical  basis:  phi- 
losophy's puzzles  vanish  when  all  is  reduced  to  mind  —  differ- 
entia of  subjectivism  from  idealism  and  absolutism  —  it  does  not 


vi  CONTENTS 

make  objects  identical  with  minds  nor  created  by  them — reductio 
ad  absurdum  of  realism  a  verbal  anathema  —  subjectivity  no 
better  explanation  of  law  than  objectivity  —  the  subject  no  more 
self-evident  than  the  object — real  case  rests  on  internal  relations 
and  is  irrefutable  —  soundness  of  the  two  premises  —  the  type 
quite  true  and  barren. 


CHAPTER  IV 
OBJECTIVISM 67 

Distinguished  from  other  forms  of  realism  —  practical  and  emo- 
tional motives  —  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  subjectivism  a  verbal 
anathema  —  justice  of  solipsism  —  critical  point  of  type  i  found 
in  actually  unperceived  objects  and  the  percipient  brain  —  sub- 
jectivism forced  to  resort  to  potentialities  but  not  refuted  by 
realism  —  objectivism's  positive  argument  equally  irrefutable 
and  fruitless. 

CHAPTER  V 
THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE 84 

The  above  reforms  have  not  banished  the  old  puzzles,  but  added 
a  new  source  of  dispute,  epistemology  —  ensuing  deadlock  or 
endless  tilt  —  representative  and  presentative  theories  —  both 
sides  thin  and  infertile  —  attempt  to  break  the  deadlock  by 
"  pure  experience  "  —  distinguished  from  radical  empiricism  — 
a  negative  view  —  too  pure  to  solve  problems  —  timid,  more 
inane  than  the  first  two,  yet  logically  irreproachable  —  more 
fertile,  perhaps,  will  be  a  combining  view,  as  in  the  next  type. 

CHAPTER  VI 

GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM 105 

Distinguished  from  the  wider  term  idealism  —  alleged  fertility 
and  real  asymmetry  —  powerful  emotional  and  practical  needs 
involved  —  personality,  society,  art,  Deity  —  traits  of  the  Great 
Subject  —  the  three  kinds  of  this  type  —  argument  from  fertility 
and  deduction  of  categories  —  Natorp's,  Miinsterberg's,  and 
Baldwin's  systems  —  infertility  of  the  hypothesis  of  mind  — 
formality  of  the  categories  deduced  —  the  Great  Self  is  a  Great 


CONTENTS  Vll 

Eunuch  —  objection  to  all  transcendentalism  —  psychological 
evidence  for  a  Great  Self  —  Psychologismus  and  theory  of  judg- 
ment —  truth  and  barrenness  of  the  psychological  argument  — 
socipsism  as  true  and  futile  as  solipsism  —  services  and  defects  of 
idealism  —  revolt  to  the  opposite  extreme. 

CHAPTER  VII 
GREAT  OBJECTIVISM 172 

Dethronement  of  mind  and  reversal  of  subjectivism's  argument 
to  give  objective  monism  —  motive  of  science:  exactness,  empir- 
icism and  independence  —  deduction  of  mind  —  fission  into  three 
types,  analogous  to  the  last  three  —  antinomy  of  consciousness  — 
epistemological  monism  solves  no  problems  —  introspection  not 
ruined  —  idealism  partly  to  blame  here  —  positive  definitions  of 
mind. —  Montague's  "potentiality"  does  not  account  for  its 
actuality  —  Holt's  cross-section  view  —  representation  defined 

—  unity  of  consciousness  not  explained  —  error  also  a  crux,  and 
memory  and  foresight  —  same  critical  points  for  dynamic  or 
biological  definitions  —  materialism  a  narrower  form  of  the  type. 

CHAPTER  VIII 
INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUTTIONISM 222 

Motives  of  the  first  —  argument  for  permanent  terms  and  beings 

—  external  relations  —  endless  tilt  with  internal  relations  — 
neither  demonstrable,  both  true  —  individual  vs.  universal  the 
same  sort  of  issue  —  change  and  freedom  vs.  the  universals  —  re- 
action  to   radical   empiricism  —  democracy  vs.   aristocracy  — 
universals   vs.   changing   particulars  —  utility   and    reality   of 
abstractions  —  modern  superstitious  dislike  of  forces,  faculties, 
etc.  —  truth  of  poetry  —  critical  point  of  the  dynamic  view  — 
transition  to  pragmatism  —  its  theses  and  critical  point  —  its 
defect  and  its  unique  service  —  abandon  the  study  of  instru- 
ments and  consider  reality  directly  —  intuitionism  and  mysti- 
cism do  so  —  their  broad  human  appeal  —  kinds  of  intuition 

—  its  objective  attitude  and  concreteness  —  Bergson  on  time, 
novelty,  freedom — his  dialectic  and  exclusions — mysticism  on 
the  inscrutability  of  God  —  needlessness  of  the  exclusions  —  why 
the  ecstasy  is  called  indescribable  —  futility  of  the  argument 
from  dialectic,  and  barrenness  of  all  partisan  types. 


Vlll  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  DC 
THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS 317 

A  type  of  higher  dimension  now  demanded — instinctive  motives 
leading  to  synthesis  —  appearance  of  finality  —  how  there  come 
to  be  different  sorts  of  synthesis  —  absolutism  —  rationalistic  in 
no  abstract  sense  —  evidence  for  it  seemingly  empirical,  really 
a  priori  —  union  of  external  and  internal  relations  —  consequent 
dualism  —  internal  rupture  of  the  system  —  the  dialectic  un- 
solved —  truth,  critical  point,  and  significance  of  the  system. 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS — THOMISM 346 

Common  sense  and  practical  judgment  as  ultimate  authority  — 
not  excluding  reason,  but  guiding  it  —  a  broad,  virile  attitude  — 
religious  dogma  the  highest  form  of  it  —  old  categories  respected 
—  historic  cases:  partial,  Eclecticism,  Scottish  school,  and  Kant; 
full,  the  system  of  Thomism  —  Kant  not  a  synthetist  but  a  com- 
promiser —  Thomism's  manifoldness  and  asymmetry  —  central 
place  of  causation,  the  great  practical  category  —  significant 
structure  of  articles  in  the  Summa  Theologica  —  particular 
syntheses  accomplished  —  kernel  of  whole  position,  authority  — 
credentials  of  authority  examined  —  it  is  necessary  to  living  — 
has  it  rational  ground  ?  Yes,  but  reason  has  its  own  dogmas,  as 
have  also  sense  and  memory  —  but  is  religious  dogma  to  be  ac- 
cepted on  authority  ?  —  credentials  of  faith  —  the  ipse  dixit 
form  of  authority  —  personal  testimony  always  of  some  weight  — 
but  not  usually  of  enough  to  be  infallible  —  the  Catholics  give  a 
long  array  of  reasons  for  accepting  the  Faith  —  yet  the  will  must 
supervene  upon  these,  and  the  grace  of  God  upon  the  will  —  thus 
authority,  vouchsafed  to  a  practical  attitude,  stands  alone  at  the 
end  —  yet  dogmas,  however  true,  need  explanation  —  as  indeed 
do  all  the  categories  of  common  sense  —  herein  Thomism  contains 
a  fundamental  and  needless  exclusion. 


CONTENTS  IX 

CHAPTER  XI 

THE  DIAGNOSIS  or  THE  DISEASE 407 

Remarks  on  further  types  —  Leibnitz's  aesthetic  synthesis  —  the 
general  trouble  with  the  types,  exclusiveness  —  grounded  in  a 
misunderstanding  —  apparent  contradiction  of  counterpart 
categories  while  yet  both  are  true  —  due  to  opposition  of  two 
basal  principles,  externality  and  internality  of  relations  —  inter- 
nality  has  appeared  un verifiable :  may  it  be  denied  ?  —  pluralism 
considered  —  indefinables  must  be  rejected,  for  we  cannot  rest 
in  mysteries  —  internality  an  axiom  —  understanding  rests  on 
internality,  belief  on  externality  —  conflict  of  these  is  the  germ 
of  the  malady  —  absolutism  alone  has  seen  this  —  "  isolation  of 
problems  "  offers  no  escape  —  old  issues  cannot  be  dismissed,  as 
they  revive  in  a  new  form  —  why  not  skepticism  then  ?  —  only 
way  is  to  take  up  the  dialectic  —  old  antinomies  all  turn  upon 
the  conflict  of  independence  and  interdependence  —  true  in  the 
field  of  action  as  well  as  theory  —  practical  forms  of  externality 
and  internality  in  politics,  art,  morals,  religion,  science,  etc. 

CHAPTER  XII 
THE  REMEDY 453 

To  solve  the  contradictions  is  to  know  the  very  nature  of  reality 

—  root  of  the  conflict  lies  in  that  smallest  of  notions,  the  negative 

—  the  germ  is  the  subtlest  possible  —  issue  reduced  to  alleged 
inconsistency  of  sameness  and  difference  —  these  do  not  deny 
each  other  —  the  error  is  arbitrary  —  yet  it  pervades  most 
fields  of  life  —  being  a  negative  judgment  it  should  have  a 
ground,  but  it  has  none  —  externality  and  internality  true,  each 
by  itself  and  both  together  —  dualism  and  monism  both  correct, 
but  duality  the  deeper  trait  of  reality  —  reality  is  fredy  dual  — 
solution   of   the   theoretical   antinomies  —  the   practical   need 
another  principle. 


X  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE 493 

Our  dualism  implies  a  second  principle  besides  free  duality  —  the 
counterpart,  uniting  what  the  other  divides  —  explaining  creation 
and  necessary  connection  —  the  self-repeater  produces  genuine 
novelty  —  this  is  the  type  of  all  explanation  and  productiveness 

—  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  met  —  how  one  fact  may  imply  others 

—  explanation  proceeds  from  two,  never  from  one  —  deduction 
of  the  category  of  universal  —  of  infinite  —  of  number  —  of  cer- 
tain attributes  of  space  —  solution  of  certain  practical  issues  — 
depends  partly  on  human  will  —  two  chief  sources  of  ill,  perverse 
will  and  niggardly  reality  —  the  solutions  have  two  requisites, 
expert  knowledge  of  particular  fields,  and  philosophy  —  need  of 
both  aristocracy  and  democracy  —  consequences  to  particular 
social  issues  today  —  to  moral  issues  —  definition  of  moral  con- 
duct —  morality  may  be  social  or  individual  —  fertility  the 
criterion  —  summary  characterization  of  our  whole  doctrine  — 
the  duality  of  reality  is  an  asymmetrical  one:    independence 
prior  to,  though  not  more  real  or  necessary  than,  interdependence; 
individual  character  must  precede  social  usefulness. 


STRIFE  OF  SYSTEMS  AND 
PRODUCTIVE   DUALITY 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  GREAT  PROBLEM 

modern  man  prides  himself  upon  the  progress 
-i-  achieved  by  the  race;  and  perhaps  justly.  Material 
progress  —  that  is  obvious :  intellectual  and  moral  progress 
also  are  not  hard  to  verify.  Instead  of  praying  for  rain,  we 
irrigate;  instead  of  the  ascetic  in  his  cell  we  see  the  social- 
settlement  worker;  the  foreign  relief  committee  replaces  the 
theological  disputant;  education  is  thrown  open  to  all. 
Despite  occasional  backsliding,  science  is  ousting  super- 
stition; practical  reform  succeeds  the  hell-fire  sermon; 
democracy  overcomes  special  privilege  and  oppression  of 
the  poor.  The  thoughtful  citizen,  reflecting  upon  these 
things,  is  inclined  to  self-congratulation  and  confidence  in 
the  future. 

But  of  course  there  is  another  side  of  the  picture,  and 
before  its  contemplation  the  congratulatory  mood  evapo- 
rates. Men  have  plenty  of  unsatisfied  needs ;  how  bitter  and 
desperate  some  of  those  needs  are,  their  possessors  well 
know.  Sickness  still  preys  upon  the  race;  insanity  and 
crime  do  not  decrease;  sex-morality  is  scarcely  well-defined; 
education  if  more  universal  is  less  liberal;  dire  poverty  dogs 
excessive  wealth;  and  for  even  those  who  succeed,  the  pace 
of  living  is  terribly  fast.  Compare  the  actual  with  the  ideal, 
and  you  find  disease  widespread,  society  corrupt,  and 
ignorance  dense.  It  needed  no  European  war  to  shock  the 
smug  optimism  which  had  come  to  pervade  our  thought  and 
speech;  a  little  realization  of  the  facts  of  human  existence 


4  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

would  have  sufficed.  Come  war,  come  peace,  come  bank- 
ruptcy or  prosperity,  German  victory  or  defeat,  the  ills  of 
the  common  lot  are  grave  enough  to  preclude  all  compla- 
cency. As  long  as  they  sting  and  threaten  humanity,  how 
shall  any  intelligent  man  be  contented  or  idle  ? 

If  he  but  raises  his  head  to  see  it,  then,  a  problem,  a  task, 
confronts  every  one  that  is  born  into  the  world;  no  less  a 
task  than  the  lifting,  so  far  as  he  is  able,  of  man's  whole 
load.  It  is  more  clearly  visible  today  than  ever  before  — 
which  is  perhaps  the  truest  indication  of  our  advance.  In 
the  old  days,  when  caste  and  strife  were  the  accepted  rule, 
such  a  task  had  hardly  emerged  into  the  light;  but  in  this 
era  of  altruism,  failure  to  feel  its  call  may  fairly  be  con- 
sidered blameworthy.  To  the  humanitarian  spirit,  when 
once  aroused,  every  deed  and  every  thought  must  find  in 
such  a  goal  its  ultimate  ground.  How,  declares  that  spirit, 
can  anybody  for  a  moment  rest  satisfied  when  he  is  not  con- 
tributing, directly  or  indirectly,  toward  the  diminution  of 
the  great  sum-total  of  human  suffering  ?  Vague  and  general 
as  is  this  mighty  task  of  amelioration,  in  imperativeness  it 
has  no  equal.  It  is  our  first  commandment,  our  initial 
problem;  the  natural  calling  of  every  man.  It  is  the  source 
from  which  springs  every  particular  duty,  from  which  must 
be  defined  and  adjudged  every  special  end  or  aim  of  each 
one  of  us. 

How  should  the  individual  set  about  so  colossal  a  work  ? 
First,  of  course,  he  must  know  what  it  comprises.  What, 
then,  are  the  needs  of  men  ?  Here  one's  zeal  suffers  a  check ; 
for  they  are  legion,  and  more  than  legion.  Food,  clothes, 
money,  health,  repute,  law  and  order,  education,  sight  and 
sound  of  beauty,  religion  —  how  many  more  ?  And  each 
of  these  covers  a  thousand  different  wants.  No  one  has  the 
power  to  embrace  all  of  these  ends.  Is  there  not  some  way 


THE  GREAT  PROBLEM  5 

of  ordering  them,  that  we  may  see  and  make  the  highest  or 
most  inclusive  choice  possible  ?  For  we  must  approximate 
the  whole  task  if  we  can.  Most  men,  to  be  sure,  will  select 
but  one  of  the  list,  according  to  personal  preference,  native 
endowment,  or  even  chance  —  and  this  is  good;  but  it  is 
better,  if  one  can  do  so,  to  base  the  choice  on  the  relative 
importance  or  comprehensiveness  of  the  various  needs.  Let 
us  then  ask  if  there  is  not  some  supreme  choice,  some  one 
deepest  need;  perhaps  one  whose  fulfilment  will  help  to 
fulfil  the  rest. 

Many  would  agree  that  there  is,  but  they  differ  as  to  its 
identity.  In  fact,  each  reformer  has  his  panacea.  In  our 
age,  "  social  reform  "  is  probably  the  most  insistent  cry; 
though  it  is  not  easy  to  be  certain  amid  so  many  voices. 
"  Christian  Science  "  is  a  call  which  to  a  growing  circle 
names  the  one  thing  needful;  and  it  is  more  influential 
among  us  than  its  despisers  like  to  admit.  A  few  decades 
ago,  natural  science  was  hailed  as  the  sure  path  of  progress; 
to  a  large  minority,  it  is  so  yet.  To  a  goodly  number,  the 
cure  of  all  ills  is  still,  as  it  was  in  earlier  centuries,  the 
Christian  Church.  And  so  on,  from  the  single  tax  to  Hindu 
mysticism.  At  different  times  the  panaceas  are  different; 
they  vary  also  according  to  the  temper  of  the  race.  The 
founder  of  Christianity  said  "  Seek  ye  first  the  kingdom  of 
God  and  His  righteousness,  and  all  these  things  shall  be 
added  unto  you  ";  yes,  all  will  agree  to  this,  but  each 
interprets  "  the  kingdom  "  by  his  own  formula. 

Now  it  is  clear  that  most  of  these  cure-alls  have  a  re- 
stricted efficacy.  If  the  social  order  were  perfected,  bodily 
health  would  not  be  ensured;  for  medical  science  depends 
upon  medical  research.  Nor  would  scientific  progress  be 
guaranteed,  nor  toleration  of  new  ideas,  or  of  old  ones.  Or 
would  socialism  foster  the  religious  sense  ?  True,  these 


6  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

things  are  not  by  social  adjustment  hindered ;  they  are  even 
encouraged,  since  the  energy  men  now  spend  in  wresting  a 
living  from  others  would  be  set  free.    But  that  only  means 
that  a  perfected  social  order  is  a  very  desirable,  even  a  neces- 
sary, end.    The  same  is  true  of  bodily  health.    If  we  never 
needed  the  doctors,  we  should  be  well  off  indeed ;  as  well  off, 
perhaps,  as  if  we  never  needed  the  lawyers  or  the  police. 
Nevertheless  bodily  health  will  scarcely  be  regarded  as  that 
single  end  which,  being  attained,  entails  the  remainder. 
May  we  not  even  say  the  like  of  religion  ?    For  religion  — 
at  least,  as  the  term  is  usually  interpreted  —  is  disconnected 
with  bodily  welfare  and  the  conduct  of  the  State.    Herein, 
no  doubt,  the  "  Christian  Scientists  "  are  a  partial  excep- 
tion. They  claim  to  confer  bodily  health,  mental  vigour,  even 
financial  success.     Nevertheless,  they  offer  no  industrial 
program,  nor  do  they  stimulate  research  in  natural  science, 
or  artistic  production.   There  is,  in  fact,  a  degree  of  hostility 
between  the  "  Christian  "  and  the  "  natural  "  species  of 
scientist.    It  might  of  course  be  that  in  the  end  the  religious 
would  satisfy  the  scientific  need;  but  it  would  demand  so 
much  reinterpretation,  it  would  have  to  be  so  utterly  trans- 
formed from  what  it  is  now  conceived  to  be,  that  the  path  of 
progress  cannot  be  said  to  lie  in  adopting  it  as  our  supreme 
goal.    And  this  is  true  likewise  of  natural  science,  of  social 
reform,  or  any  other  movement  of  our  time.    They  display  a 
mutual  exclusion,  an  inadequacy  before  one  another's  prob- 
lems.   Natural  science  does  little  or  nothing  to  gratify  the 
religious  needs  or  the  aesthetic  sense ;  it  is  rather  unfavour- 
able to  them.     Right  as  it  has  shown  itself  in  so  many  ways, 
there  is  no  surety  that  its  methods  are  adapted  to  the  re- 
ligious quest ;  and  it  is  well  known  that  in  its  presence  the 
artistic  faculties  tend  to  wither  and  droop.    And  who  would 
allege  that  art  or  religion  can  take  the  place  of  scientific 


THE  GREAT  PROBLEM  7 

investigation?  So  we  might  continue,  finding  none  of  the 
familiar  ends  sufficiently  comprehensive  to  render  it  the  one 
superlative  choice. 

Shall  we  then  give  up  the  attempt  to  systematize  these 
needs  of  man,  and  let  each  individual  choose  his  task, 
specialize  in  it,  exclude  the  rest  ?  Surely  division  of  labour 
is  profitable.  And,  as  we  have  already  said,  this  is  what  the 
majority  of  men  do.  One  selects  his  vocation  —  if  a  physi- 
cian, perhaps,  by  temperament,  if  a  banker,  by  opportunity, 
if  an  undertaker,  doubtless  by  compulsion  —  and  for  the 
average  man,  hampered  by  the  need  of  a  living,  this  is  effec- 
tive service  of  the  community.  At  any  rate,  it  is  all  that  he 
can  do.  But  there  is,  for  those  who  can  afford  to  pursue  it, 
another  way,  and  in  itself  a  better  way.  One  may  forget 
one's  inclination,  draw  off  temporarily  from  the  turmoil  of 
interests,  and  study  those  needs  of  humanity,  analyzing 
them,  reclassifying,  seeking  earnestly  for  some  more  inclu- 
sive project  hidden  in  them,  which  will  by  its  completeness 
proclaim  itself  man's  highest  choice.  The  instinct  for  a 
panacea  will  hardly  be  suppressed;  and  after  all,  that  in- 
stinct is  but  one's  sense  of  obligation  to  perform  the  whole 
of  his  appointed  task.  For  it  is  the  utmost  possible  degree 
of  advantage  to  humanity  which  the  initial  problem  puts 
before  us  as  a  goal.  It  would  be  a  grievous  folly  to  fail  of 
this  for  lack  of  trying. 

A  little  scrutiny  will  show,  we  believe,  that  this  con- 
glomerate of  ends  which  makes  up  man's  original  task,  can 
be  reduced  to  a  fairly  definite  enterprise. 

All  the  things  needed  of  men  may  be  grouped  under  two 
heads,  viz.,  goods  of  contemplation  and  goods  of  practical 
well-being.  The  goods  of  contemplation  are  those  which 
give  us  the  joys  of  knowledge,  of  the  sight  of  beauty,  or  other 
aesthetic  experience ;  those  of  practical  well-being  take  the 


8  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

form  of  health,  wealth,  clothing,  reputation,  social  order, 
etc.  The  distinction  between  these  two  is  a  familiar  one; 
it  is  like  that  between  pure  and  applied  science.  To  be  sure, 
we  cannot  here  draw  a  sharp  line;  each  involves,  perhaps, 
something  of  the  other.  The  practical  statesman  should  not 
be  ignorant  of  political  history  and  theory ;  nor  the  architect 
of  mechanics  and  geometry.  The  two  kinds  of  good  may 
not  be  separate,  but  they  are  distinct.  Either  may  be  pur- 
sued as  a  predominant  aim,  in  comparative  independence  of 
the  other.  The  physicist  does  not  usually  build  engines, 
nor  the  merchant  prince  indulge  in  economic  theory.  Such 
is  the  great  line  of  cleavage,  running  through  all  our  human 
needs. 

What  then  is  the  relation  of  the  two  kinds  ?  Clearly  there 
is  no  intrinsic  opposition.  The  value  of  each  would  be  en- 
riched by  the  addition  of  the  other.  It  is  to  the  scientist 
good  for  its  own  sake  to  know  the  properties  of  electricity; 
but  the  utility  of  that  knowledge  in  no  way  diminishes,  but 
rather  enhances,  the  measure  of  its  worth.  The  organization 
of  a  municipality  is  a  large  practical  achievement;  but  it 
loses  nothing  of  excellence  if  it  is  found  to  display  artistic 
merit.  No  intolerance  is  demanded  by  the  pursuit  of  either 
kind  of  good.  However  much  of  exclusive  concentration 
the  one  may  for  a  time  demand  of  the  pursuer,  their  duality 
is  not  in  the  end  a  hostility.  Each  calls  for  supplementation, 
so  far  as  possible,  by  the  other.  And  the  very  breadth  of  the 
initial  problem  constrains  us  to  this  supplementation. 

May  we  not,  indeed,  go  further  ?  Is  it  not  the  case  that 
one  of  these  aims  tends  of  itself  to  provide  for  the  other  ? 
Let  us  compare  the  parts  they  play  in  the  life  of  man. 

Knowledge  and  practical  welfare,  supplementary  though 
they  are,  are  not  quite  on  the  same  level.  They  are  not 
coordinate;  in  the  technical  language  of  logic,  their  relation 


THE  GREAT  PROBLEM  9 

is  an  asymmetrical  one.  In  the  order  of  time,  practice  comes 
first;  and  this  is  true  both  of  the  race  and  of  the  individual. 
The  new-born  human  being  acts  instinctively,  thinking  and 
planning  but  little  or  not  at  all.  And  in  history  science  did 
not  appear,  as  a  noticeable  or  predominant  ami  for  its  own 
sake,  until  after  a  period  of  successful  struggle  for  material 
goods.  To  be  sure,  there  was  always  with  the  adult  —  per- 
haps even  with  the  new-born  —  some  thought,  some  trace 
of  a  contemplative  attitude,  and  with  every  thought  there 
is,  if  you  wish,  some  action;  but  the  difference  of  emphasis 
in  the  different  periods  is  too  marked  to  be  neglected.  When- 
ever, indeed,  we  shall  speak  of  knowledge  or  of  practice,  we 
must  be  understood  to  mean  not  either  utterly  without  the 
other,  but  a  condition  of  life  in  which  one  or  the  other  largely 
predominates.  Now  as,  in  time,  practice  in  the  main  pre- 
cedes contemplation,  so  in  order  of  value  the  latter  must  be 
assigned  the  priority.  Does  this  statement  provoke  a  denial, 
on  the  ground  that  two  so  disparate  values  cannot  well  be 
compared  ?  Or  again,  because  both  being  necessary  to  life, 
neither  is  more  valuable  than  the  other  ?  Let  us  then 
remember  that  when  a  man  chooses  one  out  of  several  call- 
ings, he  compares,  and  compares  intelligently,  the  most  dis- 
similar values.  Perhaps  there  are  no  two  ideals,  of  however 
divergent  character,  that  have  not  been  at  some  time  and 
by  some  one,  intelligently  compared.  Nor  do  we  cus- 
tomarily refuse  to  consider  two  equally  necessary  functions 
as  of  unequal  value.  The  brain  is  generally  regarded  as 
having  more  value  than  the  liver,  though  both  are  necessary 
to  life.  But  even  if  such  comparisons  were  not  permissible, 
we  do,  nevertheless,  find,  in  the  case  of  knowledge  and  prac- 
tical well-being,  a  rational  manner  of  adjudging  their  claims, 
in  the  fact  that  we  can  compare  the  results  to  which  they 
lead.  The  great  apparent  progress  that  man  has  made,  has 


10  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

been  accomplished  largely  by  the  application  of  science; 
and  the  theoretical  side  here  came  first.  When  it  is  a  ques- 
tion of  progress,  a  high  degree  of  satisfaction  of  the  needs  of 
thought  is  prerequisite;  practical  comfort,  beyond  a  certain 
elementary  amount,  is  no  conditio  sine  qua  non.  The  grati- 
fication of  intellectual  wants  does  not  suffice  of  itself  to 
ameliorate  the  lot  of  man,  beyond  a  certain  degree;  but  it 
achieves  something  toward  that  end,  and  it  makes  possible 
a  practical  application  which  is  its  fitting  crown.  On  the 
other  hand,  practical  well-being  by  itself  degenerates  into 
animal  content  or  stupidity.  It  is  not  that  its  measure  of 
satisfaction  is  less  than  that  which  comes  from  pure  intel- 
lectual cultivation.  Many  would  say  so,  but  we  need  not 
insist  upon  the  point.  It  is  rather  that  it  contains  in  itself 
no  stimulus  to  advance.  To  know,  is  to  see  the  desirability 
of  practice  as  well  as  theory ;  to  be  well-off  is  not  necessarily 
to  see  anything  beyond  the  immediate  satisfactions.  Knowl- 
edge thus  has  a  twofold  value  as  against  practice's  onefold. 
It  provides  for,  and  urges  to,  if  it  does  not  ensure,  another 
value  besides  its  own.  We  should  then  conclude  that  if  we 
are  forced  to  choose  between  a  life  devoted  to  knowledge 
and  one  devoted  to  more  directly  practical  pursuits,  the 
former  is,  other  things  being  equal,  the  better  choice.  How- 
ever incomplete  in  view  of  the  whole  human  problem  it  may 
be,  it  gives  a  greater  prospect  for  the  future.  It  comes 
nearer  to  being  that  best,  all-inclusive  purpose  of  securing 
both  the  classes  of  good.  Of  the  two  needs  into  which  the 
general  human  problem  is  divided,  it  is  the  higher;  for  it 
tends  to  include  both. 

And  no  doubt  each  of  us  must  make  a  choice.  Limitation 
of  time  and  energy,  even  in  the  most  favourable  cases,  pre- 
vents our  assuming  the  whole  task.  Now  some  can  choose 
with  relative  freedom,  and  on  objective  grounds,  while 


THE  GREAT  PROBLEM  1 1 

others  cannot  choose  freely.  The  majority  of  men  are  so 
constrained  by  lack  of  opportunity  in  more  than  one  or  two 
directions,  by  the  immediate  necessity  of  earning  a  liveli- 
hood, or  by  strong  temperamental  bent,  that  they  are  unable 
to  take  the  objective  attitude.  But  some,  by  grace  of  for- 
tune, can  do  so;  and  upon  these  the  choice  of  the  larger 
problem,  the  advance  of  knowledge,  seems  incumbent.  It  is 
of  course  obvious  that  such  a  choice  cannot  be  quite  exclu- 
sive; the  purest  of  mathematicians  must  to  some  degree 
attend  to  his  practical  affairs.  Nevertheless,  one  may  make 
the  cognitive  end  predominate  over  the  practical  to  an 
extraordinary  degree,  without  serious  damage;  and  on  the 
whole,  when  this  is  possible,  it  seems  the  nearest  duty.  The 
absolute  need,  the  general  human  problem,  at  first  a  vague 
conglomerate,  has  thus  developed  into  the  need  of  knowl- 
edge, both  for  its  own  sake  and  for  the  sake  of  utility;  and 
this  completes  the  first  step  in  the  development  whereby  the 
initial  problem  is  reduced  to  precision. 

But  another  step  is  necessary.  "  Knowledge  "  and  "  prac- 
tical welfare  "  are  ambiguous  terms;  each  of  them  is  of  two 
kinds.  Of  practical  welfare,  we  may  distinguish  the  more 
immediate  and  the  more  remote.  Such  are,  for  instance,  the 
well-being  of  the  so-called  "  practical  "  man  who  is  satisfied 
to  obtain  the  material  and  social  comforts  of  life  for  himself 
and  his  family,  and  that  of  the  statesman  who  plans  a  future 
which  he  and  his  may  scarcely  live  to  enjoy.  No  doubt  a 
union  of  these  is  the  ideal.  But  here,  as  above,  human 
limitations  impose  a  choice;  for  every  one  who  seeks  prac- 
tical welfare  in  preference  to  knowledge,  the  one  or  the 
other  of  these  must  be  the  predominant  aim.  And  if  one 
must  choose,  then  the  more  remote  ends  are,  on  the  whole, 
the  more  desirable  ones.  For  the  contrast  is  roughly  that 
between  far-sightedness  and  the  lack  of  it.  The  greater 


12  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

practical  benefactors  of  humanity,  the  moral  and  religious 
leaders  who  have  held  the  passions  of  men  in  check,  have  in 
their  wisdom  preferred  the  future  good  to  the  present 
advantage.  The  relation  between  these  two  kinds  of  well- 
being  is  then  an  asymmetrical  one,  analogous  to  that  be- 
tween knowledge  and  practice.  While  each  condition  is 
admirable,  and,  if  circumstances  did  but  permit,  even  man- 
datory, they  are  not  equally  weighted  motives;  the  more 
remote  inclines  the  scale.  But  here,  as  in  the  preceding 
choice,  no  complete  exclusion  is  possible ;  it  is  a  matter  of 
predominance. 

This  serves  to  introduce  to  us  a  similar  partition  within 
the  sphere  of  knowledge.  The  field  of  intellectual  pursuits 
comprises  two  divisions,  one  of  which  contains  the  special 
branches  which  study  particular  parts  or  aspects  of  the 
world,  while  the  other  includes  that  discipline  which  would 
group  those  branches  together,  correlate  them,  in  order  to 
know  if  there  be  a  plan  of  the  universe  as  a  whole.  The 
former  division  is  that  of  the  sciences,  viz.,  biology,  physics, 
psychology,  economics,  etc.;  the  latter  can  have  no  other 
name  but  philosophy.  The  former  furnishes  the  more 
easily  accessible  knowledge,  the  latter  the  larger,  less  easily 
verifiable  information.  The  former  is  more  capable  of  being 
put  at  once  to  advantageous  use,  the  latter  can  be  applied 
on  the  practical  side  perhaps  only  to  aims  of  the  longest 
range  and  the  widest  bearings.  And  if  mankind  were  not 
sophisticated  today  by  a  sense  of  the  difficulty  of  the  latter 
problem,  the  errors  and  often  the  intolerance  of  its  past  dev- 
otees, it  would  not  hesitate  to  acknowledge  that  the  problem 
of  philosophy  is  the  higher  in  value.  The  very  nature  of  the 
problem  dictates  this  conclusion.  If  the  universe  were  built 
upon  some  well-defined  scheme,  if  there  were  principles 
which,  under  suitable  cooperation,  we  could  count  upon  to 


THE  GREAT  PROBLEM  13 

retrieve  us  from  our  too  frequent  discomfiture  —  then  it 
would  be  of  supreme  utility  to  know  that  scheme  and  those 
principles.  Or,  if  there  be  no  such  planful  structure  and 
behaviour,  it  is  as  desirable  to  know  that  fact ;  for  then  we 
may  with  the  better  right  adopt  the  easier  task  of  satisfying 
our  immediate  wants.  But  it  is  not  alone  in  respect  to  prac- 
tical application  that  philosophical  knowledge  seems  higher 
than  scientific.  From  the  merely  intellectual  point  of  view, 
also,  it  assumes  the  greater  value.  It  represents  the  con- 
summation of  a  progress  in  which  each  science  is  a  stage.  It 
answers  an  instinctive  question  which  no  extent  of  knowl- 
edge in  this  or  that  particular  science,  or  in  all  together,  is 
adequate  to  answer;  which  no  amount  of  "positivism," 
dogmatism,  or  skepticism  can  long  stifle.  Man  is  so  made 
that  he  gets  the  greater  intellectual  satisfaction  from  the 
broader  view,  as  one  loves  to  ascend  a  tower  in  order  to 
command  a  wider  horizon.  Of  the  two  needs,  then,  into 
which  the  cognitive  need  divides,  the  philosophic  is  the  more 
inclusive  and  the  higher. 

Now,  once  more,  a  choice  must  be  made.  Though  neither 
interest  need  be  excluded,  one  must  predominate.  From 
what  has  been  said  it  follows  that  in  view  of  the  great  hu- 
man problem,  philosophical  rather  than  scientific  knowledge 
must  be  the  chosen  end.  Its  pursuit  approximates  more 
nearly  to  that  problem.  As  the  far-reaching  practical  aims 
are  higher  than  the  immediate,  so  is  philosophy,  to  the  con- 
templative side  of  man,  more  satisfactory  than  science. 
But  it  is  also  higher  than  the  farthest-reaching  practical 
aims.  Philosophy,  if  successful  in  its  endeavour,  is  knowl- 
edge, and  knowledge,  unlike  practice,  ministers  to  more  than 
its  own  instinct.  It  naturally  succors  the  aims  of  practical 
well-being.  Were  this  not  the  case,  philosophy  might  in- 
deed be  preferred  to  the  pursuit  of  such  welfare,  but  it  would 


14  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

not  be  objectively  a  higher  aim.  It  is  the  self-transcending 
quality  of  knowledge  and  contemplation,  their  greater  in- 
clusiveness,  to  which  the  superlative  worth  of  philosophy 
is  due.  And  with  this  we  have  completed  the  second,  and 
for  our  present  purpose  final,  step  in  the  development  of 
the  initial  problem. 

There  is  then  one,  and  only  one,  of  all  our  human  wants, 
whose  satisfaction  goes  far  toward  satisfying  the  rest ;  that 
is,  the  need  of  a  knowledge  of  the  character,  on  broadest 
lines,  of  our  universe.  Such  a  knowledge,  gratifying  most 
fully  the  contemplative  instinct,  tends  also  to  promote  the 
deeper  sort  of  gratification  of  the  other  great  instinct,  that 
for  practical  welfare.  This  end  is  the  most  inclusive  single 
end  we  know.  It  is,  in  fact,  but  the  original  problem,  the 
great  human  problem  from  which  we  started;  but  it  is  that 
problem  made  more  precise  and  accessible  to  human  effort. 
Or  better,  it  is  the  closest  approximation  thereto  which  any 
one  who  must  make  a  choice  can  adopt.  And  consequently 
its  place  among  human  problems  and  needs  is  very  high, 
even  the  highest.  It  is  no  subjective  whim,  but  an  imperious 
and  universal  requirement  —  where  such  a  choice  is 
practically  possible. 

As  we  have  already  said,  if  men  were  not  sophisticated, 
they  would  quickly  admit  our  contention.  But  they  are  so, 
in  regard  to  their  own  most  vital  interests;  indeed,  the  mul- 
titude have  always  been  so.  There  is,  we  believe,  a  slow 
improvement  in  this  regard,  but  philistinism  is  still  wide- 
spread. And  there  are  certain  reasons  for  aversion  to  the 
supreme  problem  which  we  must  consider  frankly;  for, 
though  unsound,  they  have  an  appearance  of  justice.  But 
before  meeting  those  reasons,  it  is  indispensable  that  we 
appreciate  the  naturalness,  the  inevitableness,  of  the 
philosophic  problem. 


THE  GREAT  PROBLEM  15 

Suppose  a  ship  foundered,  and  the  crew  struggling  to 
keep  afloat;  some  go  down,  some  find  a  bit  of  plank  to  cling 
to,  some  keep  up  by  swimming,  some  perhaps  ground  on  a 
shoal,  etc.  Is  it  not  the  plain  duty  of  those  who  obtain  a 
respite  to  look  about,  to  essay  some  chart,  to  discover,  if 
possible,  a  shore  ?  Of  course  this  obligation  does  not  lie 
upon  those  who  must  struggle  or  perish  at  once.  But 
upon  such  as  have  the  chance  to  investigate,  it  is  binding. 
Now  this  case  is  not  unlike  the  life  of  man,  with  his  struggle 
for  existence  and  his  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to.  And  more- 
over, he  is  endowed  with  a  natural  curiosity  for  this  same 
survey.  There  is  no  doubt  that  if  we  could,  with  only  a 
moderate  amount  of  trouble,  ascertain  the  plan  of  the  uni- 
verse, such  knowledge  would  be  sought  and  prized  before  all 
other  possessions.  Those  who  teach  philosophy  in  our  uni- 
versities can  bear  witness  that  the  best  of  the  young  minds 
have  this  feeling.  It  is,  indeed,  difficult  to  comprehend  how 
any  thoughtful  youth,  as  yet  untaught  by  man's  failures, 
can  fail  to  hear  the  problem's  call.  It  is  harder  yet  to  under- 
stand how  some  of  our  teachers  can  think  to  educate  their 
pupils  while  ignoring  it.  Such  an  attitude  is  abnormal;  it 
is  a  stupor,  an  apathy  toward  the  concerns  of  the  race.  The 
animals  seek  only  immediate  goods,  and  the  philistine,  un- 
mindful of  the  human  need,  approximates  the  animal.  He 
is  not  quite  human.  Yet  what  is  the  state  of  affairs  among 
us  ?  We  are  not  astonished,  when  a  scientific  man,  a 
preacher,  a  social  reformer,  boasts  of  abjuring  metaphysics, 
philosophy,  theology,  or  any  of  these  higher  and  more  in- 
clusive disciplines;  we  do  not  rebuke  him.  How  dull,  then, 
has  become  our  sense  of  humanity's  needs !  It  should  be  a 
matter  of  the  deepest  shame.  That  we  are  not  amazed 
when  educated  men  betray  a  lack  of  philosophic  interest 
reveals  a  fundamental  pessimism ;  else  why  should  we  expect 
so  little  of  our  nature  ? 


1 6  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

But  it  is  not  merely  sluggishness  that  ails  us.  It  is  also 
fear:  not  physical,  but  social  fear.  We  are  afraid  of  being 
thought  eccentric,  of  differing  from  the  mass  of  our  fellows. 
Two  causes  work  together  here :  first,  the  present  age  insists 
upon  visible  and  tangible  results,  and  second,  our  social 
sense  has  of  late  grown  to  immense  proportions.  Indeed,  if 
there  is  one  truth  which  may  be  called  peculiarly  modern, 
it  is  the  truth  that  man  is  a  socius.  Hence  we  are  probably 
more  afraid  today  than  ever  before  of  disagreeing  with  the 
common  valuations,  of  standing  apart  for  the  pursuit  of 
goods  which,  however  fundamental,  appear  remote.  Leader- 
ship, independence  —  these  are  not  the  virtues  of  de- 
mocracy. In  an  age  when  the  novelist,  the  poet,  the  painter, 
the  political  orator,  apostrophize  the  tastes  and  needs  of  the 
average  man,  the  beauty  of  the  commonplace,  it  seems  pre- 
tentious to  point  out  a  higher  way.  "  Philosophy,"  too,  is  a 
rather  pompous  name;  "  metaphysics  "  suggests  the  aloof 
and  abstruse.  Even  the  professors  of  these  studies  do  not 
feel  quite  comfortable  when  they  utter  the  words.  Never- 
theless, it  is  in  this  case  cowardly  to  seek  the  easy  level ;  and 
the  one  who,  fearing  loneliness,  prefers  the  more  generally 
respected  human  tasks,  is  not  free  from  a  certain  priggish- 
ness.  For  every  age  has  its  pet  hypocrisies,  and  our  own  is 
perhaps  the  self -righteousness  of  the  crowd. 

To  the  sober-minded  or  the  independent  ones  there  is  a 
graver  hindrance.  They  know  of  the  failures  of  philosophy. 
It  has  fallen  far  short  of  solving  its  problem  —  and  that, 
too,  after  centuries  of  labour.  Not  torpor,  but  discourage- 
ment, is  their  worm.  The  mistakes,  the  shiftings,  the  dis- 
agreements, have  taken  the  heart  out  of  them.  They  are 
brave  enough  to  stand  apart  from  the  multitude  in  their 
search  for  the  highest  good  —  if  only  they  could  see  some 
likelihood  of  attainment!  But  history  seems  almost  to 


THE  GREAT  PROBLEM  17 

show  that  the  task  is  beyond  human  powers.  And  men, 
they  go  on  to  persuade  themselves,  were  not  meant  to  obtain 
knowledge  of  the  total  scheme  as  yet:  they  must  toil  on, 
building  up  bit  by  bit  the  sure  fabric  of  science.  The  whole 
is  known  only  by  the  parts;  induction  is  the  one  safe  method. 
Now  this  pronouncement,  to  the  already  wavering  mind,  is 
crushing.  It  has  just  truth  enough  to  sound  like  the  wisdom 
of  maturity  overcoming  youth's  misdirected  zeal.  The 
inductive  process,  mounting  step  by  step,  is  usually  safe  and 
sane;  but,  as  scientists  ought  to  know,  it  is  not  the  only 
method  of  knowledge.  If  the  whole  could  not  be  known 
before  all  the  parts  were  examined,  there  would  be  no  science 
at  all;  we  have  not  verified  our  chemistry  for  every  drop  of 
water  or  every  particle  of  carbon.  We  need  to  have,  cer- 
tainly, a  deal  of  empirical  knowledge  before  we  can  phi- 
losophize; but  no  rule  of  induction  forbids  prudent  gen- 
eralization. It  is  not  inherently  irrational  to  know  the 
scheme  as  a  whole  before  all  the  parts  are  known.  It  is 
sometimes  better  to  jump  across  a  ditch  than  to  crawl  pa- 
tiently through  it  on  hands  and  knees.  No,  it  is  by  no  means 
illogical  that  we  should  have  a  fair  acquaintance  with  the 
whole.  The  real  force  of  the  argument  lies  in  the  historical 
evidence ;  it  is  the  disagreements  that  pierce  the  soul  of  the 
aspirant.  And  no  doubt  the  wound  is  a  serious  one.  Yet, 
sincere  as  are  the  motives  of  those  men  who  suffer  it,  the 
fault  lies  in  their  own  lukewarmness.  There  is  possible  an 
aspiration  so  intense  that  nothing  but  absolute  demon- 
stration can  destroy  it  —  and  the  very  disagreements  of 
thinking  men  about  such  a  demonstration  prove  that  it  has 
not  been  given.  In  view  of  the  great  human  need  of  prac- 
tical salvation,  discouragement  then  become  a  weakness  of 
the  will.  But  men  continue  to  arise  who  are  not  affected  by 
it;  and  in  no  diminishing  number  even  today.  Yet  it  must 


1 8  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

be  admitted  that,  though  the  philosophic  instinct  must  not, 
nay,  cannot,  wholly  be  stifled,  there  is  something  intolerable 
in  the  perpetual  search  which  never  finds.  Somehow  the 
situation  must  be  righted.  And  in  the  sequel  we  shall  set 
ourselves  to  that  undertaking. 

These  being  —  to  adopt  a  Catholic  term  —  the  motives 
of  our  faith,  we  proceed  to  state  more  specifically  the  nature 
of  that  investigation  which  we  feel  driven  to  perform.  What 
we  aim  to  discover  is  something  of  the  plan  of  the  whole  uni- 
verse —  some  survey,  some  understanding  of  its  structure 
and  laws  which,  desirable  as  it  would  be  for  its  own  sake, 
would  possess  the  additional  value  of  enabling  us  to  adjust 
ourselves  most  successfully  to  our  great  environment.  Men 
have  always  had  this  dream:  they  have  conceived  answers 
also.  Some  have  said  that  the  universe  is  the  work  of  a  per- 
sonal God  —  to  make  our  peace  with  whom  is  to  ensure 
ultimate  salvation,  to  know  whose  ways  and  purposes  is  the 
highest  intellectual  enjoyment  and  artistic  ecstasy.  Others, 
repudiating  this  hopeful  creed,  insist  that  we  are  creatures 
of  the  dust,  having  but  one  life  to  live.  Between  these  two 
extremes  are  found  all  varieties  of  conception.  Which  of 
these  is  the  true  view,  or  failing  certainty,  the  most  probable 
view  ?  Such  is  the  general  nature  of  our  question.  And 
what  of  the  method  ?  What  facts  have  we  to  build  upon  ? 
Religion,  literature,  the  sciences  —  these  are  at  hand.  In 
an  undertaking  of  this  magnitude  we  need  them  all;  we 
must  profit  by  all  the  failures  and  successes  of  the  past 
which  are  open  to  us.  We  must  expect  then  to  pay  regard 
to  what  the  sciences  have  to  say,  to  the  affirmations  of  re- 
ligion, the  insights  of  the  poet,  and  to  the  practical  expe- 
rience of  men.  In  view  however  of  certain  current  prejudices, 
we  must  issue  some  warnings. 


THE  GREAT  PROBLEM  19 

We  cannot  begin,  as  some  philosophers  have  counselled, 
by  an  unquestioning  adhesion  to  natural  science,  and  natural 
science  alone.  It  may  be  that  scientific  method  has  done 
more  for  humanity  than  any  other  instrument.  And  cer- 
tainly it  would  be  foolish  to  neglect  facts  which  science  has 
brought  to  light.  But  exclusive  devotion  to  this  one  human 
discipline,  as  Spinoza,  Comte,  Spencer,  Avenarius,  and  in 
our  own  day  Mr.  Russell,  have  demanded,  savours  too  much 
of  a  priori  dogmatism.  The  very  differences  in  the  results 
proffered  by  these  thinkers  should  make  us  suspicious.  And 
in  any  case,  natural  science  has  not  won  its  credentials  in  the 
more  interesting  fields  of  inquiry,  such  as  the  study  of  the 
human  mind  and  the  objects  of  religion.  There  it  gives 
little  that  can  be  called  the  consensus  of  experts;  many 
physicists  and  biologists  believe  that  psychology  is  but  a 
physiology  of  the  nervous  system,  and  that  religion  is  super- 
stition, while  other  scientists  deny  both  of  these  views. 
Psychologists  differ  also  as  to  their  own  results  and  methods. 
Moreover,  the  teachings  of  physical  science  vary  consider- 
ably from  age  to  age.  The  theory  of  light  is  a  capital 
instance;  the  Newtonian  mechanics  is  by  some  now  con- 
sidered inadequate,  and  the  new  theory  of  "  relativity  " 
seems  almost  to  contradict  it.  There  is  reason  to  expect 
that  the  science  of  2500  A.D.  will  regard  our  own  knowledge 
as  we  regard  the  mediaeval  beliefs.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
great  works  of  art  retain  their  value  undiminished.  We  do 
not  outgrow  Homer,  Dante,  Goethe.  And  in  spite  of  an 
intellectual  minority,  it  is  doubtful  if  religious  belief  is 
wavering  or  decreasing.  One  cannot,  at  the  beginning  of 
the  investigation,  deny  that  these  branches  employ  a  dis- 
tinct organon  of  truth  incommensurable  with  that  employed 
in  natural  science,  yet  in  its  own  way  quite  as  valid.  It 
would  be  stupid  to  disdain  a  helping  hand  simply  because 


20  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

that  hand  is  not  manicured  by  the  latest  methods.  The 
religious  experience,  with  its  persuasion  of  immediate  con- 
tact with  the  Deity,  is  as  genuinely  an  experience  as  is  the 
laboratory  experiment;  and  possibly  it  is  attested  by  as 
many  independent  witnesses.  Yet  such  an  experience  can 
of  course  be  blindly  accepted  no  more  than  any  other. 
Every  sort  of  testimony  must  be  granted  a  respectful  hear- 
ing, but  none  must  be  allowed  to  elbow  out  the  others.  In 
fact  the  very  nature  of  our  problem  compels  this  tolerance ; 
for  we  have  seen  that  it  is  the  search  for  a  broader  view  than 
any  other  human  discipline  directly  affords.  Philosophy, 
in  the  words  of  a  contemporary  writer,  is  "  needed  in  order 
to  enforce  breadth  of  outlook  and  catholicity  of  judgment. 
It  stands  for  the  general  human  values  as  against  excessive 
pretensions,  whether  in  science,  in  religion,  or  in  practical 
life,  for  the  past  and  future  as  against  the  present,  for  com- 
prehensiveness and  leisure  as  against  narrowness  and 
haste."  (Norman  Kemp-Smith,  Journal  of  Philosophy, 
1912,  p.  703.) 

The  sentence  just  quoted  suggests  a  second  caution.  The 
philosopher  must,  at  the  beginning  of  his  inquiry,  refrain 
from  exercising  certain  virtues  which  appeal  most  to  a 
vigorous  age  and  race.  He  cannot,  like  the  scientist  or  the 
saint,  show  forth  at  the  outset  his  independence.  He  can- 
not start  with  a  message  of  his  own ;  his  aggressiveness  must 
be  postponed.  His  attitude  toward  science,  art,  religion, 
and  practical  experience  must  at  first  be  a  passive  one.  His 
is  not  a  rival  study  among  other  studies,  in  which  one  may 
early  begin  to  specialize,  ignoring  the  rest  and  outshining 
them.  As  his  problem  includes  the  problems  of  the  other 
fields,  so  to  a  great  extent  his  results  depend  upon  their  re- 
sults. It  is  the  largest  problem  just  because  it  waits  upon 
these  others;  "  metaphysics  "  is  rightly  named.  Like  the 


THE  GREAT  PROBLEM  21 

human  infant,  it  is  by  itself  the  most  helpless  of  all.  Its 
function  does  not  appear  until  it  has  been  led  and  taught  of 
others.  Only  after  it  has  received,  correlated,  compared, 
digested,  the  products  of  pious  experience,  of  the  laboratory 
experiment,  of  artistic  intuition,  of  practical  common  sense, 
—  only  then  does  its  turn  come,  to  teach  a  lesson  which  no 
other  study  can  convey.  A  philosophical  system  which  has 
not  built  itself  upon  such  facts  as  the  conservation  of  energy, 
wave-motion,  the  propagation  of  life,  the  mystic's  intuition 
of  God,  the  laws  of  musical  form,  would  be  no  adequate 
system.  As  well  might  a  babe  try  to  administer  a  state. 
To  be  sure,  such  a  summation  of  knowledge  can  hardly  at  the 
present  time  be  perfected ;  but  this  is  not  fatal.  We  trust 
much  of  our  present  perception;  our  present  science,  our 
present  practical  good  sense  —  imperfect  as  all  these  are ; 
and  on  the  whole  succeed  in  living  thereby.  Even  so  our 
philosophy,  though  never  finished,  might  yield  a  very  great 
measure  of  satisfaction  and  usefulness.  The  map  of  the 
world  was  always  of  some  value  to  men,  though  it  grew  more 
accurate  as  men  explored  further.  But  that  map  depends 
on  the  reports  brought  in  by  individual  travellers,  and  phi- 
losophy is  the  map-maker  who,  himself  no  great  traveller, 
sits  at  home  plotting  quietly  with  rule  and  compass.  Or 
perhaps  a  biological  metaphor  better  describes  the  situation, 
and  we  may  refer  to  Menenius  Agrippa's  fable  of  the  Belly 
and  the  Members.  When  the  members  rebelled  at  the  in- 
action of  the  belly,  which  passively  received  the  food  they 
by  their  labour  secured  for  it,  the  organism  went  wrong: 
then  only  appeared  the  indispensableness  of  that  recipient 
function  in  digesting  the  food  and  giving  them  their  power 
to  work.  Even  so  it  is  with  philosophy:  its  function  is  to 
direct,  by  digesting  the  knowledge  brought  to  it,  the  en- 
ergies of  men  in  their  effort  to  cope  with  the  demands  of  the 
environment. 


22  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

If  the  scientists,  the  reformers,  the  pious  souls,  appear  to 
do  the  work  while  philosophy  lazily  absorbs  their  product, 
let  us  then  remember  that  good  digestion  is  the  surest  pledge 
of  health.  It  is  of  course  difficult  to  keep  one's  faith  in  a 
method  which  moves  slowly  and  gives  general  rather  than 
detailed  profits.  The  life  which  is  ultimately  the  most  suc- 
cessful is  not  necessarily  at  a  given  moment  the  most  pros- 
perous. But  while  philosophy  is  not  always  of  avail  for  the 
minor  exigencies  of  conduct  —  as  a  man  need  not  be  an  ath- 
lete in  order  to  brush  his  hair  —  it  does  aim  to  offer,  in  the 
end,  the  largest  utility  in  directing  the  whole  current  of  our 
lives  and  of  human  destiny.  And  it  is  a  task  which  we  can- 
not in  honour  neglect.  To  that  task  we  now  turn. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  PHILOSOPHIC  DISEASE,  AND  RESTATEMENT 
OF  THE  PROBLEM 

THE  inevitable  and  the  supreme  problem  for  us  men  is 
the  philosophic  problem.  It  is,  to  be  sure,  a  vast  and 
difficult  one,  recording  many  failures;  but  we  have  at  our 
disposal  the  wealth  of  science,  religion,  art,  and  practical 
life,  and  there  seems  no  reason  against  eventual  solution. 
With  good  hope  we  may  start  on  our  quest.  But  the  inno- 
cence and  the  promise  of  the  start  are  soon  lost,  and  our 
present  business  is  to  note  the  manner  of  the  loss. 

At  first  the  prospect  is  bright  enough.  For  more  than  two 
thousand  years,  what  may  fairly  be  called  the  pick  of  human 
intellect  has  worked  over  this  task.  Religion  indeed  has 
been  offering  its  fruits  to  man  since  prehistoric  time,  litera- 
ture almost  as  long,  science  less  so,  though  with  accelerating 
productiveness;  for  upwards  of  twenty  centuries,  at  the 
least,  men  have  garnered  the  treasures  which  religion,  or 
science,  or  art,  or  practical  sense,  have  revealed,  and  have 
laboured  to  piece  them  together  into  some  sort  of  general 
scheme.  The  counsel  we  adopted  in  our  first  chapter  is  the 
one  which  has  been  adopted  by  some  of  the  most  illustrious 
men  who  have  lived;  Plato,  Aristotle,  Augustine,  Aquinas, 
Descartes,  Leibnitz,  and  many  others  famous  and  influential 
in  their  day,  have  toiled,  to  the  utmost  of  their  mighty  en- 
ergies, in  pursuit  of  the  very  end  we  have  signalized.  Hereby 
our  purpose  is  given  aid  and  comfort.  All  we  have  to  do, 
then,  is  to  peruse  the  result  of  their  toil.  The  map  of  the 

23 


24  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

universe  should  be  ready  at  hand.  The  professional  phi- 
losophy of  the  present  day,  representing  the  outgrowth  and 
consummation  of  the  thought  of  ages,  should  provide  the 
object  we  seek.  To  be  sure,  it  is  not  entirely  impossible  that 
certain  obsolete  views  may  possess  truths  which  the  present 
age  is  temperamentally  inclined  to  overlook.  We  should  not 
assume  that  the  only  true  view  is  the  up-to-date  view;  such 
an  attitude  savours  too  much  of  the  idols  of  the  market- 
place. But  on  the  whole  the  later  results  are  likely  to  be  the 
truer;  so  speaks  the  historical  spirit.  Our  immediate  topic, 
then,  must  be  the  study  of  the  chief  modern  systems. 

Some  disappointment,  however,  will  be  expected  by  the 
prudent.  The  problem  is  so  enormous  that  a  complete  solu- 
tion can  hardly  have  been  accomplished  as  yet.  Nor  is  it 
only  the  multitude  of  questions  to  be  answered,  that  pro- 
tracts the  solution;  it  is  also  the  quality  of  the  subject-mat- 
ter. That  subject-matter  is  to  the  last  degree  evanescent. 
The  natural  sciences  have  their  material,  the  sense-data  of 
experiment,  before  the  eye  and  hand ;  but  the  order  of  the 
universe  extends  far  beyond  the  scope  of  the  tangible.  God, 
mind,  logical  principles  —  these  are  not  for  touch  or  sight. 
Mathematics,  too,  can  by  aid  of  visible  symbols  treat  with 
cogent  demonstration  its  own  abstractions,  whereas  phi- 
losophy occupies  itself  with  the  concrete  reality,  to  which 
symbolism  is  perhaps  never  quite  adequate.  Philosophic 
subject-matter  is  thus  so  comprehensive  as  to  appear  to  lose 
the  definiteness  of  the  scientific  data,  and  yet  so  concrete  as 
to  forego  the  advantages  of  abstract  mathematical  treat- 
ment. But,  on  the  other  hand,  philosophy  is  not  permitted 
to  throw  over  wholly  the  methods  of  exact  observation  and 
reasoning  in  favor  of  unthinking  faith,  religious  dogma,  or 
artistic  intuition;  for  these  contemn  the  very  impulse  which 
gave  birth  to  philosophy  itself  —  the  craving  to  understand. 


PHILOSOPHIC  DISEASE  25 

Such  are  some  of  the  intrinsic  obstacles  to  the  desired  solu- 
tion: must  we  not  perforce  be  content  with  a  rather  modest 
result  ?  "  How  should  a  complete  chart  of  the  universe 
descend  into  the  twilight  of  an  animal  mind,  served  by  quite 
special  senses,  swayed  by  profound  passions,  subject  to  the 
epidemic  delusions  of  the  race,  and  lost  in  the  perhaps 
infinite  world  that  bred  it?"  (Santayana,  Journal  of  Phi- 
losophy, xii,  p.  565). 

Nevertheless,  persistent  thought  does  gradually  clear  up 
any  field  however  obscure,  as  eyes  growing  accustomed  to 
the  dark  discern  the  outlines  of  objects.  For  there  is  some 
light  for  the  mind's  eye  to  profit  by;  the  universe  is  before 
us,  and  we  should  be  able  to  find  out  progressively  more  and 
more  about  it.  There  is  no  reason  why  the  strongest  minds, 
able  to  profit  by  the  work  of  their  predecessors,  should  not, 
however  slowly,  make  some  definite  advance.  And  when 
we  remember  that  since  the  days  of  Socrates,  the  coopera- 
tive method  called  discussion  —  oral  or  written  —  has  been 
in  vogue,  with  its  prospect  of  mutual  correction,  some  degree 
of  confidence  returns.  There  is  no  reason  for  losing  heart, 
even  in  face  of  the  heavy  handicap  by  which  at  the  outset 
we  are  penalized. 

Expecting  not  too  much,  then,  but  still  expecting  some- 
thing, we  ask:  what  are  the  main  results  reached  by  the 
philosophers  ?  A  superficial  inspection  reveals  a  goodly 
number  of  them,  many  displaying  remarkable  acumen, 
many  dull  and  barbarously  expressed,  many  profoundly 
interesting.  But  what  is  our  amazement  when,  looking  a 
bit  deeper,  we  find  that  each  system  denies  the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  rest !  And  it  must  be  confessed  that  a  still 
more  thorough  examination  does  not  remove  this  impres- 
sion. Let  any  professional  philosopher  be  asked  to  name 
one  doctrine  that  is  by  his  compeers  generally  accepted.  If 


26  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

he  is  disingenuous  enough  to  name  one,  it  will  be  found  that 
others  name  a  different  one.  "  Each  contradicted  the  other 
fundamentally  upon  matters  of  universal  concern  "  says  a 
popular  novelist  of  our  time  (H.  G.  Wells,  Marriage,  pp. 
408-409)  of  two  current  thinkers;  and  the  remark  is  of  gen- 
eral application.  The  very  fact  that  these  statements  of 
ours  may  be  denied,  bears  them  out.  There  is  no  stock  of 
funded  truth  in  philosophy.  Unlike  science,  unlike  practice, 
it  has  no  consensus  of  experts. 

This  is,  if  we  stop  to  consider  it,  a  most  astonishing  thing. 
And  it  is  quite  natural  that  it  is  not  so  well  appreciated  by 
philosophers  as  by  laymen;  for  the  onlooker  best  sees  the 
game,  and  the  metaphysical  disputant  is  too  much  in  earnest 
with  his  own  system  to  perceive  the  humour  and  the  sadness 
of  the  whole  situation.  If  only  he  could  forget  his  own  inter- 
ests, and  once  get  a  realizing  sense  of  this  thoroughgoing 
dissension !  But  such  a  state  of  affairs  is  not  merely  astound- 
ing; it  is  terrible.  The  naive  hope  of  discovering  the  scheme 
of  the  world  withers;  skepticism  enters,  and  we  sink  back 
through  dismay  to  despair,  and  finally  to  that  unconcern 
with  ultimate  things  which  characterizes  the  Philistine  and 
approximates  the  mental  state  of  the  dog  or  the  horse.  Such 
is  the  defeat  of  the  great  thinkers.  It  is  not  simply  that  they 
have  failed  to  keep  in  touch  with  our  practical  welfare;  they 
have  failed  to  satisfy  the  impulse  to  knowledge.  The  pur- 
pose which  was  in  its  inception  highest  and  most  promising 
of  all,  has  proved  in  its  fruits  most  worthless. 

Now  the  only  course  open  to  a  sincere  mind  is  to  examine 
this  situation  in  the  utmost  endeavour  to  find  a  way  out. 
Can  it  be  true  that  things  are  as  bad  as  this  ?  Surely  not, 
says  our  instinct  of  hope. 

That  there  is  a  quite  unsettled  strife  is  a  patent  enough 
fact;  no  documents  are  needed  to  prove  it.  But  is  its  signifi- 


PHILOSOPHIC  DISEASE  27 

cance  so  ominous,  after  all  ?  Perhaps  disagreement  is  not 
an  unmixed  evil,  or  perhaps  it  is  one  of  those  ills  which,  like 
bodily  filth,  we  have  always  with  us  and  should  not  mention 
—  or  rather  should  resolutely  explain  away,  hail  as  a  glory, 
or  what  not.  Or,  again,  perhaps  it  is  a  gradually  diminishing 
evil.  Let  us  examine  these  consoling  suggestions. 

To  be  sure,  philosophers  do  not  agree,  but  is  agreement  to 
be  desired  at  all  hazards  ?  There  have  been  many  super- 
stitions, dogmas,  popular  errors,  agreed  to  by  all.  In  fact, 
agreement  would  be  stagnation.  In  one  sense  of  course  this 
is  true.  Doubt  stimulates  discovery;  disbelief  leads  to 
stronger  proof,  or  to  the  abandonment  of  delusions.  But 
though  disagreement  is  often  of  value,  even  a  sine  qua  non, 
it  does  not  follow  that  there  should  be  no  agreement  at  all. 
Such  a  claim  would  repeat  the  old  fallacy  that  because  pur- 
suit of  truth  is  good,  no  particular  truths  ought  ever  to  be 
found.  As  well  urge  that  because  exercise  is  good,  one 
should  never  rest.  The  field  of  fact  is  indefinitely  large,  and 
no  matter  how  much  is  certainly  known,  there  is  no  motive 
for  idleness.  Room  enough  remains  for  further  discoveries. 
But  that  nothing  of  the  deeper  matters  should  be  known, 
that  there  should  be  only  disagreement,  is  clearly  an  evil. 
Philosophy  then  becomes  even  as  James'  man  who  runs  to 
leap  the  ditch,  and  reaching  the  edge,  forever  stops  and 
returns  for  a  fresh  run. 

Still,  it  may  be  answered,  other  fields  beside  philosophy 
have  their  quota  of  dissension,  while  yet  held  worthy  of  our 
respect.  What  of  the  perennial  strife  of  religious  sects,  or 
of  political  parties  in  any  one  nation  ?  Is  there,  in  fact,  any 
one  form  of  government  that  is  universally  agreed,  by  men 
of  experience  and  cultivation,  to  be  the  best  ?  Is  there  any 
one  fairly  definite  system  of  morals  generally  accepted  ?  Is 
there  any  one  religion  that  commands  the  assent  of  mankind 


28  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

as  a  whole  ?  And  men  have  been  working  over  religion  and 
government  as  long  as  over  philosophy  —  even  longer.  Yet 
the  failure  to  come  to  a  final  decision  is  not  taken  as  ground 
for  despair,  for  giving  up  religion  or  government,  or  as 
evidence  of  any  peculiar  weakness. 

On  the  one  hand,  however,  the  case  is  quite  different  from 
that  in  philosophy.  In  any  given  nation  or  community 
there  is  a  fairly  workable  system  of  government  or  morals 
adopted  as  at  least  the  one  best  suited  for  that  community. 
Indeed,  there  must  be  a  certain  amount  of  agreement  — 
else  anarchy  follows.  Moreover,  in  what  are  considered  the 
more  advanced  nations  —  or  if  you  like,  the  larger,  more 
powerful  nations  —  certain  broad  principles  have  gradually 
emerged:  viz.,  government  by  representation  of  the  people, 
suffrage,  mutual  protection,  and  all  the  common  morality 
of  "  live  and  let  live."  Although  savages'  morality  and  gov- 
ernment differ  profoundly  from  such  a  resultant,  the  latter 
may  fairly  be  considered  the  view  of  the  expert,  the  former 
of  the  inexpert  judgment.  It  is  only  when  men  approach 
the  question  of  the  ultimate  ideal  government,  the  ultimate 
morality,  etc.,  that  irreconcilable  opposition  seems  to  break 
out.  In  religion,  to  be  sure,  it  is  always  present.  But  this 
is  just  because  of  the  semi-philosophic  character  of  religion. 
In  short,  it  is  when,  and  only  when,  the  deepest  problems, 
the  philosophical  problems,  begin  to  appear,  that  strife  is 
regnant.  No:  the  ills  of  philosophy  are  unique,  and  greater 
than  we  have  a  right  to  expect. 

But  are  they  as  it  were  a  grave  disease,  or  only  in  the  na- 
ture of  a  temporary  weakness  ?  Recall  the  difficulty  of  the 
problem.  How  elusive  did  we  find  its  subject-matter  to  be! 
On  this  quicksilver  the  mind  cannot  lay  its  finger;  balked  of 
direct  touch,  the  reason  faints  and  is  weary;  emotion  steps 
in,  bidding  us  choose  a  theory  that  we  like.  Perhaps  only  a 


PHILOSOPHIC  DISEASE  29 

philosopher  has  the  opportunity  to  appreciate  the  extent  to 
which  this  is  the  case.  It  is  not  so  much  that  each  thinker 
loves  his  system  because  it  is  his  own.  Something  of  this 
vainglory  lies  in  all  of  us,  of  course;  but  one  who  would 
choose  such  a  profession  is  not  likely  to  be  swayed  much  by 
vainglory.  No,  it  is  the  very  seriousness  of  the  problem  that 
weights  the  emotional  factor.  Such  and  such  a  doctrine,  one 
feels,  imperils  humanity's  deepest  needs,  its  dearest  convic- 
tions: no  parley  with  it!  The  religious  inquisitor,  the  Puri- 
tan witch-hanger,  are  not  without  their  analogues  in  the 
milder  realm  of  philosophic  strife.  Caricature  of  an  oppo- 
nent's view  for  purposes  of  ridicule  is  one  of  the  commoner 
methods;  justified  indeed  to  the  ridiculer's  conscience  by 
the  gravity  of  the  issue.  But  this,  it  will  be  admitted,  is 
only  our  present  human  weakness,  and  is  nothing  to  cause 
a  deep  discouragement.  On  the  whole  the  illegitimate  in- 
fluence of  emotion  is  probably  decreasing,  and  the  earnest 
efforts  that  are  now  being  made  to  define  our  terms  clearly, 
to  promote  mutual  understanding  and  impartiality,  augur 
well  for  the  future.  And  if  these  subjective  hindrances  were 
not  enough  to  account  for  the  dissensions,  there  remains  the 
objective  one  of  the  infinity  of  the  problem  itself.  How  can 
we  be  certain  of  anything  until  we  are  certain  of  the  Whole 
Plan  ?  Something  new  might  come  up  to  modify  our  con- 
clusions. And  while  yet  the  Whole  is  not  known,  different 
thinkers  will  emphasize  different  aspects  or  parts  —  and 
hence  difference  of  opinion  must  arise ;  though  it  may  cease 
to  be  disagreement  when  men  recognize  that  truth  is 
many-sided. 

Now  we  must  admit  that  all  these  sources  of  dissension 
are  only  too  obviously  potent.  It  is  also  probably  true  that 
the  subjective  ones  have  diminished  since  the  time  of  Hindu 
and  Greek  philosophy.  As  thought  develops  from  age  to 


30  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

age  there  is  less  personal  animus,  there  is  clearer  definition  of 
terms,  and  more  exact  reasoning.  But  these  very  arguments 
defeat  their  own  purpose.  If  the  causes  they  allege  were  the 
main  causes  of  strife,  then  on  the  whole,  strife  would  have 
diminished.  For  there  seems  no  reasonable  doubt  that 
thinkers  have  progressed  in  clarity.  Yet  we  have  today  not 
a  whit  more  precipitate  of  truth,  not  a  jot  more  agreement 
among  the  savants,  than  in  the  earlier  days.  They  are  not 
even  agreed  that  truth  is  many-sided,  and  is  therefore  toler- 
ant of  different  views.  Some  say  this  (the  absolute  idealists) , 
but  they  are  now  being  attacked  on  every  hand.  The  strife 
has  not  diminished ;  it  has  if  anything  increased.  Formerly, 
materialism  fought  with  spiritualism;  today  realism,  ideal- 
ism, pragmatism,  intuitionism,  wrestle  with  one  another. 
Every  new  view  is  a  new  combatant.  It  is  true  that  one 
school  may  prevail  in  numbers  for  a  time.  Idealism  was  the 
fashionable  philosophy  some  few  years  ago;  driven  from  its 
German  home  it  grew  mighty  in  England  and  America.  At 
the  present,  however,  realism  is  gaining  more  adherents; 
whether  it  or  pragmatism  will  command  a  majority,  who 
knows  ?  Such  temporary  majorities  have  often  arisen ;  but 
refutation  soon  followed.  On  the  whole,  the  most  dominant 
of  all  has  probably  been  Thomism  —  both  in  numbers  and 
length  of  time  —  for  it  is  still  hale  and  hearty.  But  Prot- 
estant philosophers,  with  a  few  exceptions,  consider  it  quite 
outworn;  in  fact,  they  hardly  know  it  at  first  hand,  as  a 
glance  at  the  curricula  of  our  universities  will  show.  As 
far  as  any  tendency  toward  agreement  goes,  we  find  only 
agreement  within  a  school,  not  between  the  schools. 

Nor  is  the  infinite  magnitude  of  the  problem  sufficient  to 
account  for  the  lack  of  unanimity.  Progress  may  be  made 
along  an  infinite  line;  the  equation  of  such  a  line  may  be 
found;  the  infinite  is  not  as  such  inaccessible  to  knowledge. 


PHILOSOPHIC  DISEASE  31 

The  problem  of  each  science  is  infinite,  yet  its  solution  is 
progressively  approximated.  Just  those  philosophers,  too, 
who  say  that  any  partial  account  of  the  universe  is  erroneous, 
claim  that  we  can  know  much  of  the  character  of  the  Whole 
—  viz.,  it  is  "  experience,"  it  is  an  "  individual,"  "  co- 
herent," etc.  In  truth,  no  philosopher  does  believe  that 
agreement  is  impossible  or  undesirable;  for  he  tries  most 
strenuously  to  get  others  to  agree  with  his  own  system.  The 
only  one  who  foregoes  unison  is  the  skeptic,  and  he  has  given 
up  the  problem.  If,  in  short,  the  strife  were  due  only  to  the 
weakness  of  the  human  mind  before  its  great  problem,  some 
result  would  almost  certainly  have  taken  shape  after  the 
labours  of  more  than  two  thousand  years.  The  theories 
would  not  all  have  neutralized  one  another.  The  trouble 
seems,  indeed,  to  be  a  very  grave  one;  we  cannot  invoke  our 
inadequacy,  but  are  pointed  to  some  mysterious  influence 
which  corrupts  our  thought. 

Yet  we  should  not  accept  so  dark  a  view  until  we  have 
tried  every  conceivable  avenue  of  escape.  One  more  such 
has  been  pointed  out:  may  not  philosophy  be  properly  a 
matter  of  will  or  temperament  ?  In  a  measure  perhaps  the 
universe  is  subjective,  each  man's  world  being  what  he  by 
his  personal  reaction  makes  it.  Should  we  not  therefore  ex- 
pect disagreement  ?  This  opinion  is  found  in  many  quarters 
and  under  many  disguises,  from  certain  of  the  mind- 
cure  to  the  humanistic  and  Fichtean  schools ;  though  prob- 
ably no  one  has  ever  held  it  pure.  It  is  too  patent  a  fact  that 
we  must  to  some  degree  take  account  of  external  conditions, 
even  though  the  degree  be  vanishing.  But  no  doubt  there  is, 
psychologically,  a  great  deal  of  truth  in  this  view.  We  do 
believe  at  the  dictate  of  our  temperament;  we  do  "believe 
upon  instinct,  and  find  reasons  afterward  "  (F.  H.  Bradley, 
Appearance  and  Reality,  Preface,  p.  ii);  we  do  interpret  the 


32  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

universe  after  the  pattern  of  what  we  devoutly  wish.  The 
coldest  reasoner,  the  bitterest  enemy  of  emotion,  is  as  much 
the  slave  of  temperament  as  the  religious  fanatic;  he  is 
driven  by  a  concentrated  passion  for  truthfulness.  We  need 
not  be  troubled  to  deny  the  psychological  correctness  of  the 
temperament-theory.  For  that  matter,  we  believe,  with 
Professor  Dewey,  that  when  philosophers  admit  it,  the  dawn 
of  a  new  era  will  be  upon  them.  But  all  that  does  not  spell 
consolation  to  us.  For,  among  our  many  ultimate  cravings, 
is  one  for  consistency;  and  that  craving  will  not  permit  us 
to  say,  "  the  world  is  x  "  with  one  man,  and  "  the  world  is 
not  x  "  with  another.  Temperamental  interpretations  of  fact 
cannot  claim  to  be  truth  while  they  deny  one  another.  Or 
let  us  even  suppose  this  objection  overcome ;  the  fact  remains 
that  other  philosophers  deny  the  temperament- view.  It  is 
only  one  among  others,  denying  them  and  denied  by  them. 
To  resort  to  it  is  but  to  perpetuate  the  conflict. 

But  is  it  not  just  the  very  best  way  of  settlement,  to  enter 
the  lists  and  fight  for  one  view  ?  Why  not  say  that  one  out 
of  all  these  conflicting  systems  is  right  —  or  nearly  so  — 
and  the  others  wrong  ?  This,  as  history  shows,  is  the  sever- 
est temptation  of  the  thinker.  It  appeals  to  the  vigorous 
mind,  to  ideals  derived  from  long  tradition,  to  the  motive  of 
battle  and  domination.  But  let  those  who  adopt  this  posi- 
tion —  and  they  are  the  majority  —  pause  to  reflect  on  its 
import.  Is  it  not  almost  the  same  as  saying  that  the  greater 
number  of  philosophers  are  relatively  lacking  in  intelli- 
gence ?  There  appears  no  reason  —  except  that  they  do  not 
agree  with  the  protagonists  in  question  —  why  any  one 
school  of  philosophers  should  be  considered  duller  than  the 
others.  It  is  very  unlikely  that  the  stupidities  which  the 
refuters  wrest  from  their  opponents'  views  are  really  com- 
mitted by  such  intelligent  men.  It  is  far  more  probable  that 


PHILOSOPHIC  DISEASE  33 

the  ref uters  do  not  fully  understand  the  views  they  attack. 
And  when  we  observe  that  the  refutees  in  turn  adopt  the 
same  methods,  there  seems  less  reason  for  preference  than 
ever.  There  is  of  course  no  question  but  that  the  difficulty 
of  philosophic  thinking  is  responsible  for  a  great  deal  of  mis- 
understanding; what  is  improbable  is  that  the  misunder- 
standings should  lie  so  exclusively  on  one  side  rather  than 
another.  If  all  schools  of  thought  but  one  are  fundamentally 
in  error  —  as  nearly  everybody  thinks  in  every  age  —  would 
it  not  be  a  miracle  that  one  should  escape  the  common  lot  ? 
But  the  most  convincing  evidence  that  it  is  not  so  is  that 
today,  when  philosophic  interest  is  livelier  than  ever  before, 
when  discussion  is  if  not  keener,  at  least  more  widespread 
than  in  any  preceding  age,  the  refutations  are  but  increased, 
and  the  fundamental  differences  emphasized.  Indeed,  we 
ourselves  believe  that  philosophical  inquiries  are  more 
thorough  nowadays  than  they  have  ever  been;  but  that 
only  means  that  each  philosopher  cuts  under  the  others  with 
a  sharper  sword.  The  chances  of  error  should  be  at  a  mini- 
mum, but  the  mutual  refutations  are  not  at  a  minimum; 
rather  a  maximum. 

May  we  trump  up  a  last  desperate  excuse  out  of  the  rela- 
tion of  philosophy  to  science  ?  It  has  been  alleged  (James, 
Some  Problems  in  Philosophy,  ch.  I)  that  philosophy  is  but  a 
name  for  the  unsolved  problems  of  science.  Psychology,  for 
instance,  used  to  be  thought  a  part  of  philosophy,  but  when 
it  learned  to  verify  its  theories  by  experiment  it  broke  away 
and  became  a  science.  Physics  and  chemistry  had  already 
found  their  own  methods  and  done  so;  earlier  still,  mathe- 
matics. With  Aristotle,  all  these  were  still  undeveloped, 
still  branches  of  the  philosophic  tree ;  and  where  tradition  is 
strong  the  titles  "  mental  "  and  "  natural  "  philosophy  are 
even  retained  today.  If  philosophy  is  the  residue  of  unveri- 


34  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

fied  theories,  how  could  it  give  established  doctrines  ?  But 
the  reply  is  obvious,  from  what  we  said  in  Chapter  I.  Phi- 
losophy is  not  simply  inchoate  science.  It  contains  prob- 
lems which  do  not  seem  open  to  scientific  treatment.  The 
relation  between  science  and  faith,  the  estimation  of  artis- 
tic judgment,  of  the  validity  of  reasoning  and  immediate 
experience  —  these  are  problems  of  a  different  sort.  They 
make  up  that  very  core  of  philosophy,  metaphysics.  And 
these  are  some  of  those  which,  worked  over  quite  as  long  and 
faithfully  as  the  scientific  questions,  have  not  as  yet  shown 
the  slightest  sign  of  fixed  solution.  Philosophy  has  in  fact 
ever  exhibited  a  distinction  in  kind  from  those  disciplines 
which  once  in  ignorance  took  shelter  under  its  wings.  And 
it  is  in  philosophy  alone  that  we  find  the  undiminishing 
controversy. 

Not  that  philosophy  has  failed  to  make  a  certain  kind  of 
progress.  Since  the  days  of  the  early  Hindu  or  the  Greek 
systems,  it  has  learned  much.  Old  errors  have  been  dis- 
lodged, typical  views  have  been  better  articulated.  Even 
the  beginner  in  philosophy  avoids  certain  mistakes  made  by 
Plato  and  Aristotle.  Many  of  the  older  doctrines  have  been 
revived  and  more  consistently  defended  —  so  also  have  the 
opposing  doctrines.  New  views,  too,  have  appeared  at  fre- 
quent intervals  —  refuting  and  being  refuted.  The  con- 
stituents of  the  great  equation  are  more  numerous  and  better 
factored.  But  withal  they  cancel  out. 

In  fine,  what  is  the  situation  ?  After  a  history  of  almost 
unexampled  length,  philosophy  has  less  of  positive  informa- 
tion and  more  of  controversy  to  show,  than  any  other  human 
discipline.  Soaring  to  the  greatest  heights,  it  falls  below  the 
level  of  common  knowledge ;  philosophers  are  not  even  sure 
that  there  is  an  external  world.  Religious  quarrels,  in  tenser 
though  they  may  be,  are  not  so  manifold  or  so  mutually 


PHILOSOPHIC  DISEASE  35 

undermining.  No  philosophic  schools  present  as  broad 
fronts  of  unanimity  as  the  several  Christian  churches,  as  the 
Buddhist  sects,  or  the  Mohammedans.  The  lack  of  results 
is,  no  doubt,  partly  due  to  the  vastness  of  the  problem, 
partly  to  variety  of  human  temperament,  to  careless  think- 
ing, to  lack  of  scientific  method,  to  the  intangibility  of  the 
material.  But  none  of  these,  nor  all  together,  suffice  to 
account  for  the  extraordinary,  indeed  the  complete,  dearth 
of  established  opinion.  We  do  not  see  how  to  avoid  the  con- 
clusion that  some  specific  virus  is  at  work,  some  poison  which 
prevents  philosophy  from  assimilating  its  food.  Badly  off 
indeed  we  are:  man's  best  endeavour  to  solve  the  chief 
problem  of  his  life  has  been  frustrated. 

But  that  problem  presses  irresistibly  upon  those  who  have 
felt  its  call.  We  are  constrained  to  seek  out  the  thought- 
poison,  and  finding,  to  remove  it.  It  would  be  useless  to 
begin  —  as  many  have  tried  —  by  wiping  the  slate  clean 
and  setting  forth  some  new  system.  Perhaps  that  course 
would  be  pleasanter;  but  unless  it  revealed  some  principle 
by  which  the  mutual  opposition  is  forestalled  it  would  profit 
us  little.  It  is  no  help  to  the  sick  man  to  eat  more  food  if  he 
cannot  digest  what  he  has.  We  must  for  the  present  defer 
the  luxury  of  a  positive  investigation  of  reality  itself.  There 
is  nothing  for  it  but  to  examine  the  chief  systems,  with  a 
view  to  diagnosing  the  nature  of  the  disease  that  infects 
them  all. 

This  is  no  novel  plan.  Philosophers  in  the  past  have  felt 
the  disgrace  of  endless  discord  and  have  again  and  again 
essayed  reforms.  Thus  did  Protagoras,  Socrates,  Occam, 
Bacon,  Descartes,  Locke,  Kant,  and  many  more.  Might  not 
a  cynic  even  say  that  philosophy  is  naught  but  a  series  of 
New  Year's  resolutions  ?  Certainly  there  are  few  systems 
which  are  not  intended  by  their  authors  to  be  a  reform  of  all 


36  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

that  has  gone  before;  the  one  medicine  that  will  cure  the 
bedridden  patient.  And  for  a  time  convalescence  seemed  on 
the  way;  then  occurred  the  relapse.  What  in  each  reform 
renders  it  the  prey  of  the  same  malady  ? 

We  are  to  examine,  then,  the  principal  systems  of  phi- 
losophy. Now  these  are  not  haphazard  or  whimsical,  but 
fall  into  rather  definite  types.  The  types  appear  quite  diver- 
gent; they  recur  often,  in  a  dress  adapted  to  the  time  and 
place  of  their  appearance.  Minor  differences,  answers  to 
some  particular  puzzle  of  life  or  thought,  are  found  to  depend 
on  the  acceptance  of  one  or  another  of  such  major  divaga- 
tions. It  is  the  types,  accordingly,  which  we  must  analyze; 
paying  especial  attention  to  their  mutual  refutations. 

And  at  this  juncture  a  tiny  ray  of  hope  enters.  Unsub- 
stantial as  the  rainbow  it  may  be,  but  it  has  its  value  as  a 
cheering  suggestion.  If  these  typical  systems  recur  so  often, 
does  it  not  seem  as  if  they  were  probably  in  the  main  true  ? 
If  they  are  so,  then  the  success  of  our  undertaking  would 
mean  a  double  service.  In  removing  the  virus  from  the  sys- 
tems, we  should  at  the  same  time  be  restoring  them  to  the 
ranks  of  truth.  The  medicine  we  inject  into  the  poisoned 
system  would  be  a  positive,  life-giving  principle.  With  one 
stroke  the  stock  of  funded  truth  would  be  enormously  en- 
larged, as  certain  gases  at  their  freezing  point  are  by  a  slight 
knock  instantly  liquified.*  And  best  of  all,  the  principle— 
if  there  be  one  —  which  removes  the  mutual  contradiction 
of  the  systems,  would  itself  probably  be  an  important  char- 
acter of  reality.  How  otherwise  could  we  make  use  of  it  ? 
As  the  failure  of  the  past  to  discover  that  principle  would 
have  been  the  cause  of  philosophy's  troubles,  so  the  dis- 
covery of  the  principle  itself  would  be  a  contribution  of 
supreme  value  as  positive  knowledge.  By  virtue  of  its  func- 

*  Schopenhauer,  I  think,  somewhere  uses  this  comparison. 


PHILOSOPHIC  DISEASE  37 

tion  as  uniter  of  the  many  sides  of  the  truth,  it  might  claim 
to  be  the  crowning  principle  of  the  universe  —  so  far,  at 
least,  as  our  present  knowledge  can  go. 

But  this  is  only  a  hope.  For  the  present  our  work  must 
take  its  place  as  one  more  attempt  at  reform  added  to  the 
long,  long  list,  running  the  gauntlet  of  the  refutations  which 
ruined  them,  with  all  the  antecedent  probability  against  its 
success,  and  certain  to  be  denied,  if  indeed  it  is  noticed  at 
all.  But  let  us  remember  that  we  have  nothing  to  lose  by 
the  endeavour,  and  like  Luther,  we  "  cannot  do  otherwise." 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM 

IN  the  examination  of  typical  systems  which  we  now  begin, 
certain  cautions  are  necessary. 

First,  it  is  probable  that  none  of  those  we  shall  exhibit  has 
ever  been  exactly  held.  A  simon-pure  idealist,  or  an  empiri- 
cist with  no  taint  of  a  priori  dogmatism,  may  never  have 
existed.  The  names  that  have  survived  in  philosophy  — 
Berkeley,  Leibnitz,  Fichte,  etc. — are  hardly  to  be  considered 
as  embodiments  of  only  one  type.  A  thinker's  greatness 
may  perhaps  be  estimated  by  the  rigour  of  his  adherence  to  a 
single  one,  or  by  the  number  of  them  which  he  is  able  to 
combine;  but  in  neither  respect  do  we  find  any  perfect  case. 
Each  system  includes  something  of  several  types,  as  every 
projectile  is  acted  upon  by  many  forces.  Yet  the  main  direc- 
tion of  a  rifle-bullet  is  forward,  and  of  a  falling  apple  down- 
ward ;  and  even  so,  in  a  given  system  one  type  is  generally 
found  decidedly  outweighing  the  rest.  The  views  we  shall 
mention  have  been,  then,  no  more  than  approximated  in 
the  history  of  philosophy.  We  claim  only  that  they  are 
influential  and  representative. 

Secondly,  a  large  choice  is  offered,  and  many  ways  of 
classifying  them  are  possible.  We  need  only  a  scheme  which 
is  useful  for  our  project,  viz.,  one  which  will  lay  bare  the 
root  of  the  disagreements.  For  this  reason  we  shall  treat 
the  types  as  rivals:  each  one  will  be  juxtaposed,  so  far  as 
possible,  with  an  opponent  type.  But  no  exhaustive  prin- 
ciple of  classification  seems  to  be  necessary;  for  we  aim  at 

38 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  39 

characteristic  instances  rather  than  all  instances.  Still, 
though  completeness  is  not  necessary,  we  do  intend  to  take 
up  an  obvious  majority. 

Thirdly,  it  is  likely  to  appear,  to  the  respective  devotees  of 
the  system,  that  their  views  are  not  justly  stated.  In  one  or 
two  instances  at  least  the  arguments  we  shall  give  are  not 
those  used  by  the  originators  of  the  type  in  question.  The 
reason  for  this  is  that  such  types  seem  not  always  to  have 
been  most  favourably  presented ;  they  could  have  been  de- 
fended better  than  they  were.  A  type  is  not  always  best 
understood  by  its  own  advocates.  It  is  for  our  purpose  more 
important  to  lay  bare  the  great  tendencies  or  motives  which 
have  worked  in  human  thought,  than  to  pursue  historical 
accuracy  —  though  of  course  we  must  not  stray  too  far 
therefrom. 

As  the  modern  systems  have  the  presumption  of  supe- 
riority, we  choose  our  first  topic  from  the  welter  of  present- 
day  doctrines.  These  are  preoccupied  with  the  study  of  the 
human  mind ;  they  view  the  whole  universe  as  it  bears  upon 
that  particular  corner.  The  most  natural  beginning  is  there- 
fore with  a  type  which  we  shall  call  subjectivism]  a  system 
whose  main  thesis,  roughly  put,  is  that  all  the  world  is  a 
phase  of  consciousness.  This  doctrine  is?  indeed,  bound  up 
with  a  rival  doctrine,  which  is  built  upon  the  flat  denial  of 
the  thesis;  and  we  cannot  fully  estimate  the  former  in  ad- 
vance of  the  latter.  But  we  can  judge  the  arguments  in 
favour  of  it,  and  even  certain  ones  against  it,  pretty  well  by 
themselves,  and  that  shall  be  the  purpose  of  this  chapter. 

In  setting  forth  the  motives  which  urge  men  toward  sub- 
jectivism, we  must  include  emotional  and  practical  as  well  as 
intellectual  reasons.  Temperament,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  is  ever  a  determinant  of  our  tenets.  Couched  in  logical 
terms,  this  means  that  everyone  has  at  the  back  of  his  mind 


40  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

a  certain  major  premise,  viz.,  "  whatever  is  in  the  end  good 
is  in  the  end  true  or  real  "  —  a  premise  no  more,  and  no  less, 
capable  of  proof  than  reason's  premise  "  whatever  is  implied 
in  sense-experience  and  is  consistent  therewith,  is  real  or 
true."  No  man  can  free  himself  from  the  influence  of  these 
fundamental  dogmas;  and  no  man's  philosophy  can  be  jus- 
tified or  condemned  until  his  dogmas  —  i.  e.,  his  axioms  — 
are  known.  "  Mankind,"  said  James,  "  is  made  on  too  uni- 
form a  pattern  for  any  of  us  to  escape  successfully  from  acts 
of  faith.  We  have  a  lively  vision  of  what  a  certain  view  of 
the  universe  would  mean  for  us.  We  kindle  or  we  shudder  at 
the  thought,  and  our  feeling  runs  through  our  whole  logical 
nature  and  animates  its  workings.  It  can't  be  that,  we  feel; 
it  must  be  this.  It  must  be  what  it  ought  to  be,  and  it  ought 
to  be  this;  and  then  we  seek  for  every  reason,  good  or  bad, 
to  make  this  which  so  deeply  ought  to  be,  seem  objectively 
the  probable  thing.  We  show  the  arguments  against  it  to  be 
insufficient,  so  that  it  may  be  true ;  we  represent  its  appeal 
to  be  to  our  whole  nature's  loyalty  and  not  to  any  emaciated 
faculty  of  syllogistic  proof.  We  reinforce  it  by  remembering 
the  enlargement  of  our  world  by  music,  by  thinking  of  the 
promises  of  sunsets  and  the  impulses  from  the  vernal  woods. 
And  the  essence  of  the  whole  experience,  when  the  individual 
swept  through  it  says  finally  '  I  believe,'  is  the  intense  con- 
creteness  of  his  vision,  the  individuality  of  the  hypothesis 
before  him,  and  the  complexity  of  the  various  concrete 
motives  and  perceptions  that  issue  in  his  final  state."  (The 
Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  257-258.) 

In  fact,  we  may  go  further.    One's  philosophy  is  inter- 
woven specifically  —  however  far  beneath  the  surface  — 
with  the  rest  of  one's  life;  how  completely,  we  hope  to  show 
ere  we  finish  our  task.    For  we  shall  learn  that  the  battles  of 
philosophy  reflect,  and  are  reflected  by,  the  nature  of  the 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  4! 

battles  of  man  against  man  and  of  man  against  nature.  The 
instincts  of  the  intellect  grow  out  of  and  into  the  impulses  of 
the  will  and  the  insights  of  the  emotional  nature. 

The  practical  and  affective  motives  toward  subjectivism 
are  simple.  Our  impulse  to  self -expansion,  perhaps  the  most 
powerful  in  our  nature,  urges  us  from  the  practical  side.  We 
all  want  to  grow  and  be  large;  even  physically,  few  men 
would  prefer  to  be  small  or  middle-sized.  Every  one  has  in 
him  that  conative  tendency,  which  carried  to  its  logical 
conclusion  would  make  him  contain  the  whole  universe.  Ac- 
quisition of  property,  of  reputation,  of  learning,  are  subor- 
dinate instances  of  this.  While  no  subjectivist  philosopher 
might  be  aware  that  he  was  marshalling  his  deductions  in 
order  to  gratify  this  passion  of  self -extension,  it  seems  hardly 
likely  that  men  would  have  defended  so  remarkable  a  view, 
did  it  not  coincide  with  this  ineradicable  desire.  For  it  is  not 
an  easy  or  natural  view  intellectually  —  witness  its  late 
appearance  in  history.  A  considerable  development  of 
reflective  power  seems  to  be  its  prerequisite. 

The  affective  motives  are  revealed  in  certain  not  wholly 
uncommon  moods  like  the  following:  "...  a  curious  ex- 
perience befell  me.  It  was  as  if  everything  that  had  seemed 
to  me  external  and  around  me  were  suddenly  within  me. 
The  whole  world  seemed  to  be  within  me.  It  was  within  me 
that  the  trees  waved  their  green  branches,  it  was  within  me 
that  the  skylark  was  singing,  it  was  within  me  that  the  hot 
sun  shone,  and  that  the  shade  was  cool.  ...  I  felt  in  all  my 
being  the  delicious  fragrance  of  the  earth  and  the  grass  and 
the  plants  and  the  rich  brown  soil "  (F.  Reid,  Following 
Darkness,  London,  1912,  p.  42).  Probably  almost  every  one 
has  had  his  moments  of  subjectivism,  when  Hamlet's  dictum, 
"  there  is  nothing  good  or  bad  in  this  world,  but  thinking 
makes  it  so,"  seems  axiomatic  of  reality  at  large. 


42  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

More  obvious,  perhaps,  and  more  creditable  to  subjec- 
tivism, is  the  appearance  of  giving  aid  to  religion.  If  all  is 
mind,  then  all  is  spirit;  and  if  all  is  spirit,  is  it  not  but  a  step 
to  affirm  immortality,  God,  the  angels,  and  the  other  appara- 
tus of  religion  ?  It  was  none  other  than  Bishop  Berkeley 
who  founded  modern  subjectivism;  and  who  referred  to 
himself  as  "  a  man  who  has  written  something  with  a  design 
to  promote  Useful  Knowledge  and  Religion  in  the  world." 
(Letter  of  dedication,  prefixed  to  Principles  of  Human  Knowl- 
edge, Open  Court  ed.,  p.  i.)  To  a  certain  extent,  we  cannot 
doubt,  the  type  has  borrowed  a  garment  of  sanctity  from 
religion.  Like  its  big  brother  idealism  it  has  been  defended 
by  men  whose  philosophy  has  a  spiritual  cast.  Besides 
Berkeley,  we  may  instance  the  priest  Malebranche,  Kant, 
Schopenhauer,  and  if  we  are  correctly  informed,  several  of 
the  Hindu  religious  systems ;  and  in  our  own  day  Professor 
Royce,  himself  not  strictly  a  subjectivist,  yet  occasionally 
using  its  favourite  arguments.  It  certainly  seems  probable, 
that  many  of  those  who  like  subjectivism  like  it  because  it 
appears  to  promote  the  interests  of  the  spirit. 

Intellectual  ingenuity  would  perhaps  in  the  end  create 
such  a  type ;  but  in  the  absence  of  feelings  and  desires  point- 
ing that  way  would  hardly  have  concocted  the  elaborate 
defence  which  it  has  worked  out.  To  this  defence  we  now 
turn. 

The  intellectual  motive  may  thus  be  formulated:  if  we 
can  show  that  the  universe  is  a  phase  of  ourselves,  we  escape 
the  distracting  conflicts  which  have  beset  man's  previous 
attempts  to  construe  it.  For  this  is  a  simple,  purifying  sort 
of  view.  Being  unitary,  it  gets  rid  of  that  dualism  of  mind 
and  body  which,  since  Descartes,  occasioned  so  many 
puzzles.  Reducing  matter  as  it  does  to  a  function  of  mind, 
it  gives  the  quietus  to  those  ancient  paradoxes  of  infinite 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  43 

divisibility,  time's  beginning,  motion,  etc.  The  issue  of 
monism  vs.  pluralism  also  disappears.  In  short,  subjec- 
tivism appears  as  a  reform  which  breaks  up  the  old  quarrels 
of  philosophy  and  replaces  the  endless  bickering  by  an 
appeal  to  the  deepest  need  of  man,  the  spiritual. 

What  then  more  precisely  is  the  doctrine  which  performs 
such  a  service  ?  We  may  sharpen  its  outlines  by  contrast. 
Subjectivism  is  monistic ;  but  it  is  to  be  distinguished  from 
allied  monisms.  Idealism,  for  instance,  which  is  confessedly 
monistic,  need  not  be  subjective;  acknowledged  idealists 
deny  the  reduction  of  the  world  to  a  phase  of  one's  own 
particular  mind.  Speaking  of  bodies,  an  eminent  idealist 
writes  "  their  true  existence  is  not  that  which  is  present  inmy 
mind,  but  rather,  as  perhaps  we  should  say,  present  to  it." 
(Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  2d  ed.,  p.  301.)  "Hence 
the  Universe  and  its  objects  must  not  be  called  states  of  my 
soul  "  (ibid.}.  Another  famous  idealist  explains  that  the 
world  is  not  "  meine  Vorstellung  "  in  a  subjective  sense 
(H.  Rickert,  Der  Gegenstand  der  Erkenntniss,  pp.  70,  132). 
The  differentia  of  idealism  from  subjectivism  is  the  belief  in 
a  Great  Mind  who  is  more  than  any  one  of  us,  or  perhaps  all 
of  us;  subjectivism  fixes  upon  the  private  mind  as  the  last 
term  of  metaphysics.  The  idealist  holds  the  world  to  be  a 
phase  of  this  Great  Mind,  but  not,  like  the  subjectivist,  of 
the  particular  person's  mind ;  for  the  latter  has  no  principle 
in  his  philosophy  by  which  to  infer  a  universal  spirit. 
Doubtless,  idealists  often  speak  like  sub jectivists ;  but  their 
view  includes  more.  And  of  course  it  is  true  that  the  word 
idealism  is  currently  used  to  cover  both  of  the  two  views 
here  distinguished;  but  this  is  an  inaccuracy,  and  as  we 
shall  see  when  we  come  to  treat  idealism  in  Chapter  IV,  one 
of  consequence.  Who  has  refuted  subjectivism  has  not 
thereby  refuted  idealism  as  here  understood.  Historical 


44  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

instances  approximating  the  type  subjectivism  are  Berke- 
ley's doctrine  "  esse  is  percipi,"  Schopenhauer's  "  Die  Welt 
ist  meine  Vorstellung,"  and  a  considerable  portion  of  the 
Kantian  system.  Probably  no  one  holds  it  very  strictly 
today,  although  it  must  be  hovering  rather  close,  to  judge 
from  the  number  of  refutations  of  it  from  realistic  pens; 
refutations  which,  by  the  way,  seem  not  to  have  observed 
its  distinction  from  idealism.  It  is  a  narrow  view,  to  be  sure, 
because  it  singles  out  one  element  of  reality  and  states  all 
the  rest  as  function  of  that;  but  the  same  might  be  said  of 
many  views  which  have  been  deemed  respectable.  So  ma- 
terialism did,  so  nominalism  and  Platonism;  and  so  at  this 
time  is  doing  the  recent  school  of  realism  which  reduces 
mind  to  a  function  of  objects.  Its  one-sidedness  should  not 
then  deny  it  a  considerate  hearing.  And  even  that  is  per- 
haps not  so  great.  Subjectivism,  in  one  sense  urging  that 
consciousness  is  everything,  in  another  denies  it.  If  external 
objects  are  the  contents  of  mind  and  nothing  more,  yet  the 
contents  are  not  each  in  and  for  itself,  the  mind,  and  we  have 
not,  after  all,  pure  monism.  My  purse  may  contain  money, 
and  money  might  be  denned  as  that  which  belongs  in  purses, 
but  the  money  is  not  the  purse.  The  qualities  of  the  mind's 
contents  remain  what  they  are,  even  though  they  play  in  the 
field  of  mind  alone.  What  subjectivism  seeks  is  not  the 
exclusive  reality  of  just  mere  mind  with  nothing  in  it;  but 
rather  the  inclusive  reality  of  minds  as  genera,  with  species, 
varieties,  and  so  on,  under  them.  And  even  though  sub- 
jectivists  now  and  again  in  the  heat  of  argument  boil  over 
to  this  extreme  and  declare  that  apples,  trees,  or  stones  are 
made  of  mental  stuff,  they  thereby  unwittingly  exaggerate 
their  position. 

Subjectivism  also  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  my 
mind,  acting  upon  objects,  makes  them  what  they  are.   The 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  45 

phrase  "  mind  creates  its  object,"  or  something  similar,  is 
occasionally  used  to  describe  the  doctrine.  Even  Kant  was 
guilty  of  this  excess  (Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  Miiller's  tr.,  p. 
102) .  Certain  individuals  may  have  accepted  the  phrase ;  but 
"  create  "  is  a  very  ambiguous  word,  usually  interpreted  in 
one  sense  by  subjectivism  and  in  another  by  its  opponents. 
We  cannot  rightly  take  it  to  mean  conjure  into  existence. 
The  subjectivist  believes  that  the  history  of  events  is  part 
of  the  mind's  history,  but  he  does  not  have  to  believe  that 
the  mind  causes  its  contents  to  exist,  any  more  than  the  con- 
tents cause  mind  to  exist.  Nor  is  the  mind  conceived  to  act 
upon  an  already  present  object  so  as  to  change  its  make-up 
and  thereby  to  know  it.  Certain  thinkers,  again,  might 
hold  that  view,  but  they  could  be  subjectivists  without  so 
doing.  And  it  may  be  doubted  that  any  one  today  does 
entertain  so  unwise  a  belief,  since  it  renders  knowledge  an 
absurdity.  For  if  the  mind  alters  what  it  knows  in  knowing 
it,  the  original  object  itself  is  not  known.  This  is  the  familiar 
Kantian  dilemma  of  the  thing-in-itself.  But  it  is  a  quite 
gratuitous  addition  to  that  doctrine.  The  core  of  the  type 
before  us  is,  we  think,  that  real  objects  are  content  of  the 
mind.  In  so  far  as  that  makes  it  convenient  to  say  that  they 
are  mental,  mental  they  may  be  called;  but,  as  already  ex- 
plained, there  is  always  something  irreducible,  which  indi- 
viduates the  particular  object,  making  a  rock  a  rock  and 
a  horse  a  horse,  and  prevents  it  from  being  wholly  identical 
with  the  mind  itself.  What  is  meant  is  perhaps  best  expressed 
by  the  spatial  analogy  of  the  word  "content";  a  term  which 
of  course  is  amenable  to  further  definition,  like  the  terms  of 
most  types,  but  which  nevertheless  has  a  distinct  significa- 
tion of  its  own,  not  to  be  confused  with  the  relation  of  com- 
plete identity.  We  here  adopt  it  because  it  suggests  a 
certain  intimacy  of  relation  and  logical  dependence. 


46  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Such  is  the  type  we  are  to  examine,  conceived  as  object  of 
the  intellect.  The  defence  of  it  consists  of  a  negative  and  a 
positive  part:  the  former  works  by  rebuttal  of  opponents, 
concluding  that  there  is  naught  independent,  and  therefore 
logically  outside,  of  one's  mind;  the  latter  endeavours  by 
analysis  to  demonstrate  that  everything  is  content  of  the 
mind. 

The  negative  argument  is  based  upon  a  train  of  thought 
dating  back  at  least  to  Zeno  the  Eleatic.  It  reasons  that 
external  objects  have  properties  that  are  mutually  contra- 
dictory; hence  they  cannot  have  that  independent,  sub- 
stantial reality  which  we  naively  ascribe  to  them.  They  are 
then  to  be  considered  subjective  alone.  Historically,  these 
contradictions  were  pointed  out  in  Zeno's  paradoxes  of 
motion,  space,  number,  etc.;  in  Plato's  criticism  of  par- 
ticular objects  (Republic,  5.  479),  and  in  many  other 
authors;  culminating  in  the  Hegelian  declaration  that  all 
things  but  the  Whole  are  self-contradictory.  Such  mode  of 
argument  has  been  used,  now  for  one  purpose,  now  for  an- 
other, from  the  Eleatics  to  Professor  Bergson.  The  "  dia- 
lectic," as  it  is  called,  marks  one  of  philosophy's  perpetual 
sores;  whoever  wishes  to  discredit  an  opponent  may  point 
him  to  that  unhealed  spot.  Many,  of  course,  deny  that 
there  is  such  a  sore;  for  these  the  scene  of  the  dialectic  is 
transferred  from  the  external  world  to  the  philosophical 
world  —  inasmuch  as  their  view  is  disputed.  However,  this 
shall  be  dwelt  upon  later ;  we  are  now  treating  only  the  ap- 
plication to  subjectivism.  The  two  thinkers  who  have  most 
effectively  plied  the  dialectic  whip  to  drive  us  to  this  type, 
are  Berkeley  and  Kant.  Berkeley  found  that  material  sub- 
stance was  an  abstraction,  containing  the  most  glaring  con- 
tradictions, and  therefore  to  be  discarded  (Principles  of 
Human  Knowledge,  Introduction,  and  §§5,  9);  Kant  found 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  47 

in  the  famous  "  antinomies,"  that  this  external  world  of 
ours  implied  conflicting  attributes  —  infinite  and  finite 
divisibility,  a  first  cause  and  no  first  cause,  etc.  —  wherefore 
its  externality  must  be  denied. 

In  judging  the  force  of  this  position,  we  may  well  enough 
admit  the  truth  of  the  dialectic.  Our  interest  lies  in  the 
question,  does  it  send  us  to  subjectivism  ?  And  we  answer 
it  by  asking,  of  what  avail  is  it  to  relegate  self-contradictory 
things  to  the  realm  of  mind  ?  The  contents  of  the  mind,  the 
things  we  see  and  touch  and  infer,  are  just  as  inevitable  to 
us,  whether  called  physical  or  mental,  external  or  internal. 
What  is  the  profit  in  rubbing  out  the  whole  external  world 
when  the  contradictions  are  (as  Kant  himself  admitted)  due 
to  our  minds,  and  therefore  present  in  the  internal  world  ? 
The  disease  is  but  communicated  from  the  victim  who  is 
slain  to  the  victim  who  slays.  Reason  in  losing  objectivity 
loses  its  own  integrity.  It  is  as  if  one  tried  to  cure  his  indi- 
gestion by  never  eating.  And  with  the  discovery  that  the 
contradictions  are  native  to  the  mind,  comes  a  suspicion  of 
the  reasoning  which  the  mind  performs,  and  of  this  very 
argument  itself.  It  does  not,  in  fact,  matter  a  whit  where 
the  antinomies  are  put,  so  long  as  they  are  not  solved.  They 
carry  their  poison  wherever  they  go.  Subjectivism  may  or 
may  not  be  true,  but  it  is  not  demonstrated  by  this  method. 
This  establishing  of  itself  by  convicting  its  opponent  of  sin, 
this  puritanic  argument  from  damnation,  we  shall  find  all 
too  frequent  in  philosophical  society;  but  it  has  no  logical 
force.  The  first  argument  for  subjectivism  then  leaves  us 
where  we  were  before;  the  dialectic  has  proved  or  disproved 
naught,  and  the  balance  of  the  opponents  is  yet  even. 

A  second  attempt  to  prove  subjectivism  by  denying  its 
opposite  is  apparently  of  Kantian  origin,  though  not  far 
removed  from  a  well-known  Platonic  dictum.  Seemingly 


48  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

positive,  it  is  shown  by  a  little  scrutiny  to  be  negative.  It 
proceeds  thus:  we  accept  the  truth  of  laws  or  general  prin- 
ciples, such  as  Newton's  laws  in  mechanics,  or  the  two  prin- 
ciples of  thermodynamics.  We  believe  these  laws  will  hold 
in  the  future ;  yet  we  have  not  observed  that  future.  How 
can  we  be  sure  thus,  in  advance  of  observation  ?  Now  if  it 
were  the  case  that  the  very  constitution  of  our  minds  made 
us  interpret  all  we  observe  under  the  form  of  laws,  we  could 
be  sure  that  all  events  would  appear  under  that  form.  Let 
us  then  call  law  a  form  of  the  mind.  This  will  account  for 
our  ability  to  know  in  advance,  to  predict;  and  nothing  else 
will  do  so.  For  the  only  other  possible  explanation  is,  that 
the  nature  of  objects  is  permanent  and  law-abiding;  and 
previous  to  observation  we  could  not  be  sure  of  this. 

The  idea  has  seemed  very  brilliant,  and  —  whether  or  not 
Kant  really  held  it  —  has  probably  converted  many  of  his 
readers  to  subjectivism,  and  through  that  to  idealism.  As 
here  stated,  it  must  not  be  confused  with  the  idealists'  argu- 
ment, which  sometimes  includes  it;  that  doctrine  accepts  a 
universal  mind,  while  the  above  may  be  held  without  any- 
thing more  than  our  several  particular  minds.  Its  emphasis 
on  the  subject,  man,  cannot  fail  to  be  satisfactory  to  man; 
and  perhaps  this  in  part  accounts  for  the  rapid  growth  in 
favour,  of  the  Kantian  philosophy.  It  looks  positive  and 
constructive,  and  not  at  all  an  argument  by  exclusion. 
What  then  are  its  merits  and  defects  ?  First,  it  does  not 
apply  to  anything  but  laws  or  universals.  Particular  ob- 
jects and  events  remain  outside  the  mind,  under  the  title 
"  things-in-themselves."  But  is  it  not  as  far  as  it  goes 
sound  ?  Now  notice  that  its  point  lies  mainly  in  the  nega- 
tive part,  that  nothing  else  but  subjectivity  accounts  for  a 
priori  knowledge.  This  was  in  fact  emphasized  by  Kant 
(Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  Transcendental  Aesthetic,  §1,  3; 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  49 

§11,  3;  Transcendental  Analytic,  ch.  II,  §  I).  Is  it  then 
shown  that  the  hypothesis  of  objective  laws  and  univer- 
sals  will  not  account  for  it  ?  No;  it  is  only  urged  that 
we  could  not  by  observation  verify  that  hypothesis.  Of 
course  not  by  observation,  we  reply;  but  would  that 
hypothesis  not  account  for  the  fact  of  a  priori  knowledge 
just  as  well  as  the  other  hypothesis  of  subjectivity  ? 
Neither  hypothesis  can  be  verified  by  observation;  that 
the  unalterable  constitution  of  our  mind  makes  us  think 
in  terms  of  space,  time,  laws,  etc.,  is  no  more  accessible 
to  observation  than  are  objective  universals.  How  do  we 
know  that  the  mind  may  not  change  ?  Kant  himself  as- 
serted that  time  was  a  mental  form,  and  thence  it  would 
seem  to  follow  that  mind  cannot  change;  but  in  fact,  this 
begs  the  question.  To  make  time  subjective  is  as  much  as 
to  assume  outright  that  mind  cannot  change.  It  needs 
proof;  and  there  is  no  evidence  given  to  show  that  time  in 
particular  is  subjective,  besides  the  above  argument  for  sub- 
jectivity. In  short,  the  subjectivity-hypothesis  is  no  better 
than  the  objectivity-hypothesis.  Kant  arbitrarily  excluded 
the  latter.  Either  would  explain  the  point  in  question; 
neither  has  an  advantage  over  the  other.  The  balance  is 
again  even ;  the  argument  is  indifferent. 

This  indifference  to  subjectivity  has  apparently  been  felt 
by  many  idealists;  for  they  do  not  seem  as  a  rule  to  lay 
much  stress  on  the  above  train  of  reasoning.  They  tend 
rather  to  interpret  Kant  as  urging  that  universal  principles 
are  true  and  valid,  yet  not  commensurable  with  the  partic- 
ulars of  sense-observation;  and  hence  as  able  to  live  only 
in  a  world  of  reason.  But  reason  is  here  used,  as  we  shall 
later  see,  in  an  objective  sense,  i.  e.,  to  mean  a  Great  Reason 
rather  than  one  of  our  private  minds.  This  is  the  Platonic 
argument,  which  is  not  relevant  to  subjectivism.  Neverthe- 


50  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

less  it  must  be  admitted  that  there  is  a  temptation  even  to 
the  idealist,  to  regard  a  universal  as  in  some  way  the  creation 
of  the  particular  mind  (Royce,  Encyclopaedia  of  Philosophi- 
cal Sciences,  vol.  I,  p.  107,  almost  writes  thus).  Thus  we  find 
it  urged  that  the  concepts  of  science  are  limits  approximated 
by  the  facts  of  sense-observation,  and  consequently  never 
realized  therein  (Cassirer,  Substanzbegriff  und  Funktionsbe- 
griff,  pp.  169,  ifi,etal.;  A.  E.  Taylor,  reviewing  the  same  in 
Mind,  1911,  p.  440) :  hence,  it  is  argued,  they  must  be  differ- 
ent in  kind  and  spring  from  a  different  source,  viz.,  our  rea- 
son. Another  form  of  the  same  view  is  the  semi-popular  one 
of  Pearson  and  Mach,  that  concepts  are  mental  shorthand, 
subjective  formulae,  because  they  are  not  adequately  realized 
in  the  external  world.  Why  that  which  is  non-physical 
should  be  subjective  is  never  explained.  In  fact,  as  with  any 
of  the  great  philosophic  types,  this  whole  position  is  found 
to  percolate  in  many  directions  through  the  mass  of  pseudo- 
philosophic  opinion.  But  our  accusation  of  irrelevancy  re- 
mains :  subjectivity  is  no  better  explanation  of  the  validity 
of  law  than  is  objectivity,  and  no  more  verifiable. 

At  the  same  time,  subjectivism  is  not  itself  refuted  by  its 
failure  to  refute  the  opponent.  The  scales  so  far  are  level; 
either  view  might  be  perfectly  correct.  Subjectivism's  dog- 
matic exclusion  of  the  alternative  lays  it  open  to  attack  by 
the  same  method.  It  rests  on  no  positive  proof,  but  on  an 
arbitrary  denial;  and  such  a  negative  attitude  arouses  in  the 
adversary  a  temper  favourable  to  an  equally  negative 
dogmatism  in  the  opposite  direction. 

We  pass  to  the  positive  argument  for  subjectivism.  There 
is,  first,  a  specious  reason ;  which  though  not  claiming  to  be 
a  proof  of  it  inclines  one  to  favour  the  subjective  theory. 
This  has  its  prototype  in  the  Cartesian  Cogito  ergo  sum,  and 
answers  to  a  prevailing  inclination  in  modem  philosophy  to 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  51 

regard  the  thinker's  own  existence  as  more  certain  to  him 
than  anything  else.  Even  the  realistic  Bergson  begins  his 
magnum  opus  with  this  doctrine.  We  say  prevailing,  be- 
cause the  present  almost  exclusive  interest  in  subjective 
problems  rather  implies  a  conviction  of  the  basal  position  of 
the  subject  in  the  universe,  as  a  "  bed-rock  "  of  certainty. 
However  that  may  be,  the  argument  of  Descartes  is  spe- 
cious; it  proves  something,  but  not  what  it  pretends  to 
prove.  I  doubt,  therefore  I  exist;  but  of  course  the  only 
certainty  here  is  that  doubting  (whatever  that  may  turn  out 
to  be  when  analyzed)  occurs.  Doubting  might  be  —  some 
say  now  that  it  is  —  a  clash  of  bodily  tendencies,  forces,  or 
what  not;  or  it  might  be  a  phase  of  the  history  of  an  irre- 
ducible mind.  Either  interpretation,  objective  or  subjec- 
tive, is  possible.  It  is  not  because  doubting  is  a  mental  or 
subjective  process  that  its  occurrence  is  undeniable,  but 
because  its  presence  is  clear  and  distinct.  And  indeed  we 
find  Descartes  himself  later  appealing  to  the  quite  objective 
"  lumen  naturale  "  as  the  best  evidence  of  any  truth.  If  the 
subjective  as  such  were  more  clear  and  distinct  than  the 
objective,  psychology  would  be  farther  advanced  than  it  is 
today.  It  is  the  objective  sciences  that  have  made  progress. 
The  real  evidence  for  subjectivism  is  not  based  upon 
any  prerogatives,  but  begins  by  granting  external  objects  as 
just  a  title  to  reality  as  minds.  Its  closest  approximation  is 
found  in  Berkeley  and  Schopenhauer.  But  we  should  not 
rest  it,  as  Berkeley  did,  upon  nominalism.  For  one  might 
contend  —  as  Kant's  doctrine  does  —  that  abstract  con- 
cepts are  clearly  before  the  mind,  and  be  a  subjectivist  still; 
and  equally  might  one,  like  Hobbes,  deny  abstract  ideas  and 
be  a  realist.  Nor  would  it  refute  realism  to  show  that  the 
abstract  concept  "  material  substance  "  is  in  itself  meaning- 
less, unless  it  were  previously  shown  that  things  are  what 


52  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

they  mean  to  us.  Some  such  major  premise  as  this  last, 
clearly  underlies  subjectivism's  positive  argument;  we 
prefer  therefore  to  state  the  case  in  the  following  form : 

Every  object  or  entity  identically  is  —  at  least  in  part  — 
the  relations  it  assumes  to  something  else.  But  every  entity 
assumes  the  relation  of  being  content-of-consciousness ; 
therefore  every  object  identically  is  such  content.  In  this 
conclusion  we  drop  the  "  at  least  in  part"  because  if  any  part 
of  the  object  is  left  over,  that  too  by  the  premises  becomes 
"  content,"  until  all  is  swallowed  up. 

Generally  and  abstractly,  the  first  premise  means  that 
whatever  enters  into  a  relation  is  really  qualified' by  doing  so; 
the  relation  in  turn  enters  into  the  thing's  very  soul  and 
becomes  an  essential  part  of  it;  they  are  to  a  A  extent  one. 
So  the  stone,  attracted  by  the  earth,  becomes  a  heavy  body; 
the  relation  to  earth  affects  the  body.  This  premise  is  in- 
voked and  denied  again  and  again  by  philosophic  partisans, 
and,  as  we  shall  find,  plays  a  fundamental  r61e.  We  shall 
follow  usage  and  call  it  the  principle  of  internal  relations, 
or  more  briefly,  of  internality;  its  contrary  is  called  the 
principle  of  external  relations  or  externality. 

In  the  same  way  the  second  premise  means  that  every 
thing,  or  object,  or  entity  of  any  sort  can  be  shown  to  come 
into  the  net  of  a  subject's  consciousness.  It  may  be  ob- 
ject of  sensation,  or  perception,  or  mere  thought;  it  may 
be  present  object,  or  past  object,  or  future  object  of  our 
consciousness;  but  always  it  stands  in  some  connection 
therewith. 

The  meaning  of  the  premises  and  conclusion  becomes 
clearer  when  we  seek  their  justification. 

The  principle  of  internal  relations  is  a  very  frequent  as- 
sumption, in  the  conduct  of  life  and  in  certain  sciences.  In 
life,  we  judge  a  man's  personality  by  his  conduct  towards 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  53 

other  men,  animals,  and  even  inanimate  things.  His  rela- 
tions of  friendship  or  enmity,  cooperation  or  indifference  or 
frustration,  his  disposal  of  his  goods  —  all  these,  we  say, 
constitute  his  character;  and  that  means  that  they  are  him- 
self. The  latest  school  of  psychological  theory  considers  an 
animal's  individual  consciousness  to  be  the  behaviour  of  its 
body  —  which  is  to  say,  the  relationships  that  body  takes 
on,  toward  physical  things  —  of  grasping,  arranging,  de- 
vouring, rejecting,  and  so  on  through  the  complex  history  of 
an  animal's  life.  An  electron  is  defined  by  the  physicist, 
or  an  element  by  the  chemist,  by  the  spatial  and  temporal 
relations  it  assumes  to  other  bodies.  In  fact  all  description 
of  things,  or  judgment  about  them,  really  identifies  those 
things  with  their  relations  toward  other  things.  Put  ab- 
stractly, we  may  express  it  thus :  when  an  object  A  assumes 
relation  R  to  another  object  B,  we  say  A  is  R  to  B,  as  in 
"  the  pen  is  on  the  table  "  or  "  the  paper  is  seen  by  me," 
and  it  seems  unnatural  not  to  interpret  "  is  "  to  mean  a 
degree  of  identity  between  subject  and  predicate.  If  I  say 
"  I  am  John  Jones  "  I  am  understood  to  identify  the  subject 
and  predicate ;  and  the  refusal  to  interpret  other  predication 
likewise  looks  artificial  and  strained. 

This  is  perhaps  only  an  inductive  generalization,  based 
upon  observation  of  the  actual  thought-process ;  but  it  seems 
so  general  and  compelling  that  we  may  well  judge  it  to  fore- 
stall any  investigation  of  the  particular  field  concerned.  It 
is  however  met  by  a  strong  opposition.  The  universality  of 
the  principle  of  internal  relations  is  denied.  We  are  told 
that  not  all  statements  take  the  form  "  something  is  so  and 
so  ";  but  rather  that  some  at  least  if  not  all  should  be  ex- 
pressed "  something  has  the  relation  R  to  so  and  so."  The 
latter  view  we  may  call  the  relational  theory  of  judgment, 
the  former  the  predicative;  they  stand  upon,  and  defend,  the 


54  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

internal  and  external  theories  respectively.  The  relational 
theory  claims  that  the  form  "  A  has  R  to  B  "  is  not  reducible 
to  the  form  "  A  is  C  ";  that  there  is  not  identity  between  A 
and  KB;  that  the  relation  is  not  "  internal  "  to  A  but  ex- 
ternal to  it,  added  to  it  without  changing  it  or  becoming 
part  of  it.  It  supports  this  claim  by  analysis  of  certain 
scientific  ideals  (those  of  the  more  abstract  side,  e.  g.,  math- 
ematics), finding  that  they  demand  ultimate  elements  or 
indefinables  which  are  constant  and  which,  entering  un- 
changed into  certain  relations  to  one  another,  generate  the 
subject-matter  of  the  science.  This  Herbartian  view  — 
which  at  present  pays  little  respect  to  its  German  protagonist 
—  must  however  be  based,  not  on  the  emulation  of  any 
science,  however  successful  that  science  may  be  in  its  own 
limited  domain,  but  on  philosophical  analysis;  and  such 
analysis  is  provided.  Those  who  deny  the  principle  of  inter- 
nal relations  usually  allege  that  there  are  propositions  to 
whose  meaning  the  predicative  theory  is  inadequate.  "  A 
shilling  is  less  than  a  pound."  The  relation  "  less  than  " 
cannot  be  adequately  described  as  a  quality  residing  in  the 
shilling;  for  it  refers  to  "  a  pound  "  which  is  (conceptually) 
outside  the  shilling.  What  is  (logically  speaking)  outside 
cannot  be  considered  identical  with,  or  a  part  of  the  latter. 
Now  this  argument  —  like  Kant's  dictum  with  regard  to 
time  —  really  assumes  what  it  wants  to  prove.  Why  can- 
not the  full  nature  of  the  shilling  involve  the  pound  as  a  part 
of  itself  ?  Why  cannot  the  full  nature  of  each  thing  in  the 
world  imply  everything  else  ?  The  internalist  declares  that 
it  does  so;  the  externalist  denies  it,  misled,  it  would  seem, 
by  the  spatial  connotations  of  "  outside  "  and  "  part  of." 
In  doing  this,  the  externalist  has  begged  his  point.  There  is 
no  reason  whatever,  urges  the  internalist,  why  one  thing 
should  not  be  in  part  identical  with  things  other  than  itself 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  55 

or  with  relations  including  those  things.  Certainly  we  often 
speak  of  two  objects  of  the  same  identical  colour.  But  of 
course  the  externalist  will  not  admit  that  there  is  any 
identity  between  two  distinct  things.  The  red  of  two 
roses  is  not  to  him  (however  alike  be  the  shades)  identical ; 
they  only  have  the  relation  of  similarity.  Yet  who  has  the 
better  of  this  dispute  ?  What  necessity  can  be  urged,  by 
which  we  should  choose  either  description  and  reject  the 
other  ? 

The  externalist,  however,  has  other  strings  to  his  bow.  He 
can  show  that  predication  itself  is  a  relation ;  that  an  attri- 
bute, even  if  considered  in  part  identical  with  its  substance, 
only  has  the  relation  "  identity  "  to  that  substance.  He 
translates  even  identity  itself  into  relational  terms.  He  calls 
to  his  aid  modern  logic,  which  treats  "  is  "  as  the  "  illative 
relation  "  rather  than  as  an  indication  that  the  predicate 
and  the  subject  are  partially  one.  Now  there  could  be  no 
argument  better  suited  for  the  internalist's  position.  Ob- 
viously, identity,  sameness,  oneness,  may  be  called  relations 
if  we  wish.  Every  instance  of  predication  can  be  stated  in 
accord  with  the  relational  view.  "  The  rose  is  red  "  can  be 
put  "  the  rose  has  a  certain  relation  (partial  identity)  to 
red."  No  internalist  need  deny  that;  but  he  can  also  turn 
it  the  other  way.  He  can  translate  the  relational-termi- 
nology back  into  the  original  identity-terminology.  And 
one  way  of  stating  it  may  be  useful  for  one  purpose,  the  other 
way  for  another.  But  the  fact  that  we  can  use  propositions 
with  "  is  "  in  logical  inference  is  due  as  much  to  the  rela- 
tion's being  that  of  identity,  as  it  is  to  its  being  a  relation  at 
all.  Indeed,  there  is  no  proposition  that  cannot  be  stated 
in  the  "  A  is  B  "  form.  That  does  not  mean,  of  course,  that 
we  do  not  often  infer  by  other  relations  than  identity.  "  A 
implies  B  "  and  "  B  implies  C  "  give,  in  the  calculus  of  re- 


56  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

lations,  "  A  implies  C"  But  "  A  implies  C  "  serves  its  pur- 
pose in  this  chain  only  because  the  relation  of  implying  C  is 
true  of  A;  and  the  being  true  of  A  may  for  aught  yet  seen 
to  the  contrary  be  expressed  by  the  form  "  A  is  implier  of 
B,"  i.  e.,  there  is  a  degree  of  identity  between  these  two. 
The  identity-form  is  never  ruled  out.  To  be  sure  there  are 
many  kinds  of  reasoning  which  cannot  adequately  be  put 
into  syllogistic  form.  But  they  must  all  sooner  or  later  be 
put  in  prepositional  form;  and  this  restores  the  applica- 
bility of  the  internalist  view  at  the  end.  What  comes  in  at 
the  end  of  a  process  may  be  important  after  all;  is  not  the 
reading  and  understanding  of  the  sentences  we  write  as  im- 
portant as  the  writing  ?  The  indispensability  of  relations 
need  not  lead  the  externalist  to  deny  the  identity- view.  We 
cannot  then,  so  far,  agree  that  the  externalist  is  able  to 
refute  his  opponent,  or  vice  versa. 

A  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  internalistic  view  has  also 
been  used.  If  X's  relation  to  Y  is  truly  part  of  X,  then  X 
when  related  to  F  has  grown  by  that  part  and  is  different 
from  X  when  not  so  related.  In  the  case  of  some  one  becom- 
ing aware  of  a  tree,  the  tree,  entering  into  the  relation  of 
being  known,  is  thereby  changed.  Hence  the  tree  which  is 
known  is  not  the  original  tree  but  a  new  one !  This  reductio 
seems  to  be  simply  a  mistake.  Denote  the  relation  called 
"  being  known  "  by  R,  "  tree  "  by  A,  "  some  one  "  by  B. 
Then  A,  becoming  known,  assumes  the  relation  R  to  B. 
Before,  it  did  not  have  that  relation,  and  was  only  A .  When 
known,  it  is  enriched  by  the  attribute  RB  as  well.  Some- 
thing has  been  added;  the  former  A  was  a  part  only,  the 
later  A  joins  on  a  new  part,  RB.  A,  fully  understood,  in- 
cludes all  the  relations  into  which  it  enters.  The  original  A 
does  not  cease  to  be  itself  when  it  becomes  a  part  of  the 
whole,  of  which  the  RB  is  another  part.  What  is  known  - 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  57 

i.  e.,  what  enters  into  the  relation  R,  is  that  original,  and 
that  original  only;  it  is  not  the  RB  that  is  known,  though 
RB  is  for  a  later  reflective  judgment  to  be  identified  with 
A.  RB  is  the  knowing  of  A;  an  element  in  the  total  situa- 
tion ARB.  Now  there  are  dialectical  objections  to  these 
statements,  and  we  confess  that  they  are  very  serious  ones, 
and  shall  hereafter  occupy  ourselves  with  them;  but  they 
are  not  accepted  by  externalists,  and  consequently  the  latter 
should  not,  it  appears,  allege  the  above  redwtio. 

These  considerations,  if  they  are  correct,  show  that  the 
principle  of  internal  relations  has  strong  reasons  in  its  favour 
and  as  yet  none  against  it.  The  full  bearing  of  the  principle 
cannot  now  be  seen;  it  will  engage  our  attention  in  the  ex- 
amination of  some  later  types.  But  no  ground  has  been 
forthcoming,  in  the  arguments  usually  directed  against  it, 
from  which  to  deny  it.  The  relational  view  of  propositions 
has  simply  looked  like  another  reading  of  the  same  material, 
no  truer  or  falser  than  the  internalist  view.  Neither  refutes 
the  other.  The  first  premise  of  subjectivism  may  then  pass 
for  the  present  as  sound,  though  liable  of  course  to  correc- 
tion from  future  discussion  concerned  with  other  types. 

The  second  premise  of  subjectivism's  positive  argument 
claims  that  every  object  in  the  universe  is  object  for  a  sub- 
ject; i.  e.,  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  really  related  to  some  par- 
ticular mind  by  what  is  called  the  cognitive  relation. 

Notice  that  this  premise  alone  would  not  suffice  —  though 
often  it  is  taken  by  hostile  critics  to  be  the  whole  of  the  type 
in  question.  Every  object  under  the  sun  might  always  be 
known  by  some  one  great  man,  or  dog,  or  cat,  without  being 
definable  as  essentially  known  by  him  or  it.  It  is  the  first 
premise  that  justifies  that  definition;  for  it  says  that  things 
are  the  relations  into  which  they  enter.  If  we  had  not  the 
first  premise,  subjectivism  would  be  a  tautology,  however 


58  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

universally  the  second  premise  held.  It  would  say  only, 
"  everything  is  known,  and  being  known,  is  related  to 
mind  ";  but  objects  need  not  then  be  what  they  are  known 
as.  Hence  subjectivism  needs  the  principle  of  internal  rela- 
tions. But  whereas  absolute  idealism  uses  that  principle  too 
(up  to  a  certain  point)  it  does  not  in  propria  persona  add  the 
second  premise,  that  all  things  are  most  fundamentally 
viewed  as  related  to  a  mind.  It  does  not  lay  superlative 
stress  on  that  particular  relation,  the  cognitive  one,  and  in- 
cline the  centre  of  gravity  to  the  subjective  side.  It  gets  its 
"  Absolute  Mind,"  as  will  later  be  seen,  by  a  different 
method.  Subjectivism  renders  the  universe  asymmetrical, 
absolute  idealism  renders  it  symmetrical.  Subjectivism 
moves  the  universe  over  into  the  particular  mind;  absolu- 
tism, letting  it  stand  where  it  is,  equates  the  universe  to  an 
absolute  mind.  Subjectivism  is  allied  to  idealism  through 
its  first  premise,  but  its  differentia  lies  in  the  second.  For  it 
is  that  differentia  which  enables  it  to  claim  that  reality  is 
content  of  the  mind,  not  external  to  it.  If  A  (the  object)  is 
related  by  R  (cognition)  to  B  (my  mind)  then  A  is  definable 
as  RB,  and  A  appears  as  function,  phase,  or  content  of  B; 
and  thus  everything  that  is  appears  as  B  or  content  of  B. 
The  word  "  content  "  signifies  that  the  independent  external 
object  A  has  disappeared  and  all  that  is  left  in  the  world  is 
that  mind  and  functions  of  it.  Of  course  the  relation  R  re- 
mains irreducible  to  B,  and  thus  subjectivism  is  not  a  blank 
monism.  A  universal  mouth  might  regard  all  the  world  as 
its  food,  but  that  food  is  not  the  mouth.  Or  again  we  may 
think  of  a  pedestal  and  its  base ;  the  support  is  the  base  but 
the  base  is  not  the  column.  And  equally  of  course,  the  word 
"  content  "  involves  a  spatial  metaphor  which  is  not  to  be 
taken  literally.  This  we  mentioned  at  the  outset,  in  com- 
menting upon  the  monism  of  the  type.  There  never  was  a 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  59 

mere  monism  since  Parmenides,  except  in  the  minds  of 
pluralists,  and  such  a  type  would  not  be  worth  studying. 
The  unique  feature  of  subjectivism  is  the  reduction  of  reality 
not  merely  to  mental  tissue  and  substance,  but  to  that  and  its 
functions  or  contents  as  well. 

Most  arguments  that  have  been  used  to  prove  the  theory 
have  dwelt  upon  this  second  premise;  as  it  is  the  more 
specific  premise,  that  is  natural  enough.  We  now  give  the 
main  positive  ones.  But  we  must  give  warning  that  their 
validity  cannot  be  fully  appraised  until  we  state  the  at- 
tempts of  the  next  type  (objectivism)  to  refute  them. 

All  the  qualities  of  perceived  objects  which  we  treat  as 
external,  size,  colour,  hardness,  etc.,  may  be  regarded  as 
sense-qualities,  and  all  the  properties,  utility,  beauty,  effi- 
cacy, etc.,  as  essentially  thought-objects;  and  both  kinds  as 
subjective.  We  consider  (i)  secondary  qualities,  (2)  primary 
qualities,  (3)  other  properties. 

(i)  Much  has  been  written  of  late  in  defence  of  the  objec- 
tive reality  of  colours,  tastes,  etc. ;  this  for  the  present  we 
defer,  promising  to  consider  under  the  next  type  the  chief 
arguments  proffered  thereupon.  Our  immediate  concern  is 
the  argument  for  subjectivity.  Physical  science  seems  to 
have  shown  that  colours,  sounds,  etc.,  depend  upon  the 
reception  of  certain  impacts  or  wave-motions  in  the  bodily 
organism.  The  effect  of  these  wave-motions  on  eye,  ear, 
etc.,  seems  somehow  to  determine  the  appearance  and  char- 
acter of  the  sense-quality,  the  colour  or  sound.  That  quality 
may  be  "  psychical  "  while  the  effect  in  the  sense-organ  is 
"  physical,"  or  the  two  may  be  identical  in  essence;  in 
either  case  the  quale  of  the  red,  the  sweet,  or  the  cool  is  in 
some  way  determined  by,  or  a  function  of,  the  organism.  It 
does  not  matter  how  inscrutable  or  irreducible  we  may  be- 
lieve such  a  quality  to  be ;  it  is  still  to  some  degree  dependent 


60  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

upon  the  external  stimuli  being  received  in  our  own  bodies. 
And  further  there  is  no  scientific  evidence,  so  far  as  we  know, 
that  the  atomic  particles  or  the  media  of  light,  heat,  etc.,  are 
coloured  or  sweet  or  warm;  whereas  those  qualities  are 
sometimes  felt  without  external  stimuli  and  merely  from  the 
the  activity  of  our  sense-organs  —  as  when  we  press  the 
eyeball  or  have  auditory  hallucinations.  The  conclusion 
seems  beyond  a  reasonable  doubt  that  the  secondary  quali- 
ties reside  in  our  bodies  alone.  A  great  deal  of  what  we  see 
and  feel  of  the  outer  world  is  then,  a  datum  of  our  own 
bodies. 

This,  however,  is  not  enough  to  prove  the  case,  for  the 
body  is  not  the  mind;  and  therefore  the  colours,  sounds, 
etc.,  of  our  environment  are  not  yet  shown  to  be  mental  con- 
tent. But  it  does  so  strikingly  suggest  it  —  so  close  is  the 
intimacy  of  mind  and  body  —  that  these  considerations 
have  been  deemed  the  "  entering  wedge  "  of  subjectivism. 
And  no  doubt  many  have  been  persuaded  by  them  to  be 
subjectivists.  Nevertheless  the  argument  is  not  sufficient. 
The  body  is  to  the  mind  just  as  much  physical  external 
reality  as  anything  else;  it  is  no  more  "  psychical  matter  of 
fact  "  than  a  stone.  A  further  step  is  needed,  viz.,  the  ad- 
mission that  the  bodily  data  are  essentially  in  the  cognitive 
relation,  are  known,  are  objects  of  awareness.  That  step  we 
may  of  course  take;  for  a  colour  that  does  not  look  coloured 
is  no  colour.  This  is  indeed  the  gist  of  the  matter;  subjec- 
tivism does  not  truly  need  the  doctrine  that  secondary  quali- 
ties depend  on  the  body.  Nevertheless,  men  might  not 
easily  have  noticed  that  all  perceived  objects  are  thus  de- 
pendent upon  mind,  had  not  the  sense-organs,  with  their 
suggestion  of  subjectivity,  seemed  to  affect  the  very  char- 
acter of  the  objects.  For  men  do  not  commonly  notice  a 
factor's  presence  unless  it  initiates  some  change.  We 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  6 1 

should  not  notice  the  presence  of  light,  did  it  not  by  im- 
pinging upon  bodies  give  forth  effects  or  colours  not  seen  in 
free  space;  nor  is  a  gas  visible  unless  it  changes  the  hue  of 
the  visual  field.  It  is  then  not  necessary  to  the  truth  of 
subjectivism  that  the  objective  motions  be  endowed  by  the 
perceiving  sense-organ  when  they  appear  before  it,  with  dis- 
tinctive secondary  qualities.  The  mind  may  very  well  be 
essential  to  objects  without  contributing  some  positive 
quality  to  their  constitution;  mind,  in  short,  need  not  be 
conceived  as  in  any  way  creating  the  objects.  This  we  al- 
ready saw  in  our  definition  of  the  present  type.  If  the 
objects  appear  unaltered  to  the  mind,  they  appear  just  as 
much,  and  the  mind  is  just  as  essential.  The  proof,  then,  of 
the  subjectivity  of  the  secondary  qualities,  is  drawn  from 
the  fact  that  they  are  objects  of  consciousness ;  and  that  it  is 
meaningless  to  think  of  them  as  outside  that  relation.  To 
be  red  is  to  look  the  way  a  red  object  looks,  to  be  loud  is  to 
sound  the  way  a  loud  noise  sounds,  to  be  cool  is  to  feel  the 
way  a  cool  body  feels.  The  subjective  implication  is 
inevitable. 

(2)  Primary  qualities,  as  Berkeley  saw,  are  open  to  the 
same  treatment  as  secondary.    Size,  shape,  motion  are,  when 
seen,  related  to  consciousness,  and  if  we  try  to  define  them, 
we  must  do  so  in  terms  of  their  appearance  to  us.    It  may  be 
that  Berkeley  himself  was  too  much  inclined  to  dwell  on  the 
alterability  of  these  data  by  the  subject's  point  of  view;  but 
in  the  beginning,  and  in  the  light  of  his  purpose  to  persuade 
the  vulgar,  this  would  be  natural.     Berkeley's  theory  of 
vision  is  not  necessary  to  subjectivism. 

(3)  The  same  reasoning  holds  of  all  properties  of  objects 
of  which  we  are  aware  by  thought.    Consider  a  tree.    Its 
size,  shape,  colour,  texture,  etc.,  are  percepta]    its  past 
growth  is  object  of  necessary  inference;   the  laws  which  it 


62  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

obeys  are  necessities  of  thought  based  upon  sense-observa- 
tion; and  so  on.  There  is  not  a  namable  characteristic 
that  is  not  definable  as  a  function  of  thought  or  sense.  The 
various  qualia  of  these  characteristics,  their  specific  dif- 
ferences, are  indeed  not  accounted  for  by  such  definition; 
but  that  objection  raises  a  very  different  issue.  Subjec- 
tivism may  be  quite  true  without  accounting  for  every  de- 
tail. Its  realistic  opponents  believe  that  their  own  realism 
is  true,  but  they  do  not  claim  that  it  alone  accounts  for  the 
manifold  details  of  the  world.  In  fact,  we  shall  later  see 
that  it  is  not  of  the  slightest  assistance  in  that  regard.  Only 
a  thoroughgoing  pragmatist,  if  anybody  at  all,  is  entitled  to 
urge  that  such  an  inadequacy  implies  untruth ;  and  prag- 
matism is  a  type  to  be  later  examined.  The  one  thing  need- 
ful is  that  all  objects  and  all  phases  of  objects  are  when 
defined,  or  described,  stated  wholly  in  terms  of  sense-data 
or  thought-data. 

The  gravamen  of  Berkeley's  position  has  been  said  to  lie 
in  the  question,  what  is  the  meaning  of  the  term  existence 
itself  ?  If  you  say  what  it  means,  you  will  say  what  it 
signifies  to  you.  Now  an  adversary  might  not  allow  that 
question:  he  might  say  that  it  tacitly  begs  the  issue,  that  its 
appearance  of  rigorous  logic,  its  analysis  of  implied  meaning, 
contains  the  assumption  that  things  are  what  they  are  to 
me.  This  assumption  was  made,  and  should  have  been 
acknowledged;  it  is  nothing  less  than  our  first  premise 
above.  But  the  applicability  of  that  premise  consists  in  the 
fact  that  existence  does  have  a  significance  for  me.  As  there 
is  no  shade  of  meaning  in  the  English  language  which  could 
not  be  expressed,  however  circuitously,  in  the  French,  so 
there  is  nothing  about  existence,  or  externality,  or  inde- 
pendence which  cannot  be  stated  in  the  language  of  sub- 
jectivism. Existence  means  some  sort  of  presentation; 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  63 

independence  may  mean  permanence  through  the  changes  of 
the  subject,  or  being  a  surd  irreducible  to,  but  felt  by,  the 
subject,  or  being  the  cause  of  the  subject's  states,  according 
to  one's  view;  but  all  of  these  signify  some  relation  whose 
formality  does  not  prohibit  its  truth.  So  far  as  we  know 
these  abstract  considerations  have  never  been  met  by  the 
enemy,  unless,  as  we  shall  soon  see,  with  the  argument  of 
damnation.  But  the  positive  case  for  subjectivism  is  not 
maledictory;  it  follows  a  simple,  impersonal  logic.  In  its 
abstractness  and  its  simplicity  lies  its  strength. 

But  does  this  positive  argument  yet  cover  all  cases  ? 
There  were  objects  before  I  was  born,  there  are  objects  I 
shall  never  see,  nor  perhaps  even  dream  of;  yes,  even  the 
slip  of  paper  before  me  really  contains  a  great  deal  more 
than  I  shall  ever  know.  Subjectivism  meets  all  these  doubts 
with  the  same  query.  How  do  you  know  there  were  objects 
before  I  was  born  ?  By  certain  compulsory  reasonings. 
But  these  reasonings  are  none  the  less  present  to  a  subject, 
for  all  their  compulsoriness.  Is  the  past  event  then  naught 
but  a  mental  construction  ?  Now  here  the  enemy  seeks  to 
damn  subjectivism;  for  "  mental  construction  "  savours  of 
blasphemy.  We  have  said  that  the  present  type  does  not 
assert  that  mind  creates  anything.  The  past  event  is  object 
of  an  inference  forced  upon  mind.  But  did  it  not  exist  before 
that  inference  was  made  ?  Quite  so.  But  still  the  old 
question  comes;  what  does  that  past  existence  mean  ?  It 
is  that  which  we  have  to  take  account  of,  that  which  makes 
the  present  what  it  is,  and  is  thereby  related  to  our  present 
experience.  "  Related  "  is  here  used  as  vaguely,  abstractly, 
as  you  please,  but  none  the  less  truly.  Or  put  the  objection 
thus:  what  was  the  past  event  then  when  it  had  no  "  mean- 
ing "  ?  We  can  still  follow  Berkeley  in  answering:  "  It  was 
that  which  if  known  would  be  known  as  so  and  so  "  —  which 


64  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

answer  is  relative  to  some  intelligence.  The  objector  will 
always  retaliate  by  pointing  out  something  more  in  the 
object  than  our  definition  has  yet  included ;  but  every  defi- 
nite more  can  be  included  as  fast  as  it  is  named.  This  pro- 
cedure applies  to  every  object  that  can  be  distinguished,  and 
to  every  phase,  state,  or  property  of  every  object.  All  the 
objections  of  this  class,  in  fact,  may  be  reduced  to  the  one 
characteristic  objection  that  there  is  something  of  a  non- 
mental  nature,  something  numerically  distinct  from  any 
mind.  The  enemy  raise  up  instances,  such  as  past  time,  or 
hitherto  unknown  attributes  of  things,  whose  very  essence 
seems  to  place  them  beyond  relation  to  the  mind.  No  such 
extreme  cases  are  needed;  the  simplest  present  thing  has 
the  same  remoteness.  It  is  never  seen  just  at  the  moment 
when  the  light-rays  left  it,  and  the  message  of  those  rays  is 
liable  to  a  thousand  distorting  influences.  But  all  this 
passes  subjectivism  by.  All  this  does  not  deny  that  these 
external  things  are  definable  as  in  relation  to  some  mind. 
Numerical  distinction  between  object  and  subject  is  quite 
irrelevant;  for  it  is  no  more  requisite  that  objects  should 
themselves  be  minds  than  that  the  food  in  a  man's  mouth 
should  consist  of  teeth  and  tongues. 

Yet  these  considerations  are,  to  many  thinkers,  uncon- 
vincing. So  far  as  one  may  judge  from  the  written  word, 
this  is  due  to  either  or  both  of  two  reasons:  —  when,  that  is, 
it  is  not  due  simply  to  temperamental  blindness.  The  first 
reason  is  the  inability  of  the  subjectivist  platform,  by  itself, 
to  suggest  a  solution  of  specific  problems;  the  second  is,  the 
^\  presence  of  a  correlative  and  opposing  type,  which  has  good 
arguments  in  its  favour.  This  second  reason  constitutes  a 
distinct  chapter  in  human  thought,  and  shall  presently  be 
discussed;  the  first  affords  us  an  opportunity  to  point  out 
something  of  the  defect  of  the  type,  which  we  now  take. 


THE  TYPE  SUBJECTIVISM  65 

Subjectivism  does  not  provide  a  means  of  distinguishing 
between  what  is  real  and  what  is  imaginary.  It  subsumes  all 
under  the  utterly  general  rubric  "  related  to  some  mind." 
The  scheme  would  seem  to  be  too  simple  and  abstract  to 
explain  the  complexities  of  the  world.  Subjectivism  de- 
livers a  truth,  but  at  the  cost  of  fertility  and  interest.  We 
have  sought  a  plan  of  the  universe,  which  shall  mark  out 
differences,  the  distinctions  of  high  and  low,  better  and 
worse,  true  and  false;  and  we  are  told  "  all  is  related  to 
mind."  Has  this  information  any  substance  ?  Are  we  not 
asking  for  bread  and  given  a  stone  ?  It  is  hardly  possible 
to  deny  it.  Indignation  is  the  natural  outcome,  and  we 
revolt  to  the  other  side;  the  opposing  type,  realism,  is  now 
in  order.  But  indignation,  even  when  righteous,  may  pre- 
vent a  man  from  seeing  certain  real  merits  of  the  sinner. 
Subjectivism  may  well  be  true,  without  accounting  for 
everything.  An  abstract  view  is  a  false  view,  say  the  abso- 
lute idealists;  yet  even  they  do  not  claim  to  account  for  the 
concrete  detail  of  reality.  But,  as  they  also  urge,  it  is 
enough  that  a  view  be  on  the  whole  true  and  consistent  with 
the  known  details.  And  this  is  the  case  with  subjectivism. 
There  is  no  generally  admitted  distinction,  such  as  that  be- 
tween real  and  unreal,  which  is  inconsistent  with  it.  The 
difference  between  fact  and  fancy  may  be  formulated  as 
that  between  a  large  consistent  body  of  experience  and  a 
momentary  datum,  out  of  harmony  with  the  rest.  Or  it 
might  be  put  as  the  difference  between  God's  thoughts  and 
our  thoughts  —  or  in  any  of  a  hundred  ways.  The  nature  of 
the  distinction  is  to  be  decided  by  a  separate  investigation; 
it  is  quite  irrelevant  to  the  truth  of  subjectivism.  This  in- 
difference is  at  once  the  type's  merit  and  defect;  it  is  true 
but  fruitless. 

In  alleging  the  infertility  of  subjectivism,  we  have  singled 
out  for  mention  this  particular  pair  of  categories  —  real  and 


66  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

imaginary  —  for  an  important  reason.  It  will  appear  as  we 
proceed  that  each  type  of  philosophy,  like  each  individual 
man,  has  its  pet  vice.  There  is  a  critical  point,  up  to  which 
it  is  palpably  true,  and  beyond  which  it  is  palpably  unprof- 
itable, though  no  less  true.  We  here  get  our  first  glimpse 
of  this  curious  phenomenon.  The  crux  of  subjectivism  is 
the  differentiation  of  reality  into  two  fields,  the  mental  and 
the  objective.  Or,  since  subjectivism  originally  possesses  the 
mental  field,  we  may  designate  the  objective  side  as  the 
critical  point.  It  does  not  deny  the  reality  of  the  objects, 
but  it  cannot  account  for  that  reality  from  subjective 
motives  alone.  The  recalcitrant  category  can  always,  with 
suitable  additions,  be  defined  in  the  language  of  the  type  - 
as  a  rope  will  lend  itself  to  the  shape  of  any  body.  Never- 
theless, the  rope  would  give  small  clew  to  the  composition 
of  that  body  and  its  internal  diversity;  nor  does  the  formula 
"  content  of  the  mind  "  explain  how  it  is  that  some  contents 
are  fact  and  others  imaginary.  More  of  this  later:  we  but 
hint  at  a  trait  whose  significance  will  grow  as  we  proceed. 

The  objections  which  are  today  being  hurled  with  crush- 
ing force  against  the  type,  are  best  understood  in  connection 
with  the  type  opposed  and  correlative  to  it.  For  there  is  a 
system  so  connected  with  subjectivism  that,  it  would  seem, 
the  truth  of  either  implies  the  falsity  of  the  other.  Already, 
in  fact,  we  have  found  our  first  type  supporting  itself  upon 
the  denial  of  this  second;  it  now  behooves  us  to  see  the 
second  supporting  itself  upon  the  denial  of  the  first.  Only 
after  we  have  considered  the  positive  theses  of  both,  and 
their  mutual  rebuttals,  shall  we  be  in  a  position  to  assess 
their  claims  to  truth,  and  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  practical 
and  affective  needs  which  have  confirmed  them  in  the  hearts 
of  men.  To  this  second  type,  then,  the  opposite  of  the  first, 
we  turn. 


CHAPTER  IV 

OBJECTIVISM 

AT  our  title  one  may  feel  surprise;  we  adopt  it  in  the 
interest  of  truthfulness.  This  second  type  —  as  often 
occurs  in  human  history  —  has  been  misnamed,  and  the 
misnomer  is  prejudicial  to  a  fair  estimation.  "  Realism," 
it  is  commonly  called;  but  the  term  covers,  as  we  shall  see, 
at  least  three  quite  distinct  philosophies,*  besides  its  mis- 
leading connotation.  As  used  in  modern  times,  "  realism  " 
is  not  characterized  by  standing  for  the  reality  of  anything 
denied  by  other  views.  Taken  as  it  frequently  is,  to  aver 
the  reality  of  the  external  world,  it  involves  a  gross  absurd- 
ity. Imagine  our  debt  of  gratitude  to  a  system  which,  after 
twenty  centuries  of  unremitting  investigation  of  reality,  at 
last  demonstrated  that  there  is  a  reality  to  investigate! 
What  the  doctrine  in  question  really  defends  is,  that  those 
external  objects  are  not  reducible  to  subjective  terms;  it 
is  the  character  and  the  definition,  not  the  actuality  of 
them,  that  is  under  discussion.  Since  the  whole  point  of 
the  present  type  is  that  it  is  correlative  and  hostile  to 
subjectivism,  it  is  better  dubbed  objectivism. 

At  the  same  time,  the  correlation  is  not  symmetrical.  The 
first  type  puts  the  centre  of  gravity  of  the  universe  far  over 
on  one  side  —  the  mental;  the  second  replies,  not  by  put- 
ting it  equally  far  on  the  other  side,  but  by  striving  to  main- 
tain an  even  balance  between  two  ultimate  and  independent 
terms,  subject  and  object.  It  is  dualistic  or  common-sense 

*  Platonic  realism,  dualistic  realism,  and  "  new  "  realism. 
67 


68  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

realism  that  we  are  here  discussing,  and  not  the  extreme 
realism  of  the  present  day,  which  would  reduce  the  conscious 
subject  itself  wholly  to  objective  terms.  It  may  be  a  little 
unsatisfactory  to  the  symmetry-loving  intellect  to  find  the 
issue  thus  askew;  but  the  lop-sidedness  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  modern  interests  of  man  centre  about  himself.  In 
another  age  and  another  race,  the  skewness  might  be  in 
another  direction,  or  might  be  supplanted  by  an  even 
balance.  The  particular  bone  about  which  the  contention 
rages  is,  however,  relatively  indifferent;  it  is  the  nature  of 
the  controversy  itself  that  concerns  us.  We  pass  then  to 
the  examination  of  objectivism,  or  dualistic  realism;  the 
doctrine  that  there  are  objects  which  are  other  than  contents 
of  mind. 

First  come  practical  and  emotional  motives.  If  we  all 
desire  self-expansion,  as  subjectivism  implied,  it  is  no  less 
true  that  we  grow  by  humbling  ourselves.  We  obediently 
adapt  ourselves  to  the  weather,  to  the  demands  of  society, 
to  the  laws  of  bodily  health;  we  study  the  apparent  caprice 
of  Nature;  in  short,  we  adopt  a  realistic  attitude.  Knowl- 
edge is  power;  and  the  one  who  gets  knowledge  must  for  the 
moment  suppress  the  aggressive  instincts  and  passively 
observe  Nature's  ways.  This  is  only  common  sense;  for 
common  sense  is  realistic.  The  scientific  impulse,  too,  works 
in  the  same  direction.  The  experimenter  has  been  called  a 
questioner  of  Nature;  and  a  questioner  questions  not  him- 
self but  another.  The  scientific  discoverer  does  not  draw 
forth  from  his  mind  what  he  discovers,  nor  deduce  it  from 
his  inner  consciousness;  he  waits  to  see.  He  treats  reality 
as  if  it  were  independent  of  himself;  that  is  why  realists  are 
fond  of  appealing  to  science.  There  is  also  a  profound  emo- 
tional reason  for  dualistic  realism:  the  religious  one.  To 
worship  something,  is  the  craving  of  most  men;  and  worship 


OBJECTIVISM  69 

is  of  a  power  not  ourselves.  Even  if  we  identify  this  power 
with  our  own  deeper  self,  we  must  assume  a  realistic  disposi- 
tion towards  it;  we  must  in  humility  ascertain  what  it 
imposes  upon  our  conduct  and  regulate  our  lives  by  the 
standards  it  sets.  If  subjectivism  seems  to  exalt  the  spiritual 
above  the  material,  objectivism  at  least  may  claim  to  pro- 
mote more  effectively  the  true  religious  attitude.  When  the 
two  foes,  religion  and  science,  unite  with  common  sense  to 
urge  a  doctrine,  that  doctrine  must  be  precious  indeed  to  the 
heart  of  man. 

The  reasoned  defence  of  objectivism  is  analogous  to  that 
of  its  counterpart.  We  shall  then  give  it  under  two  heads: 
the  negative,  or  refutation  of  subjectivism,  and  the  positive 
argument. 

The  negative  case  is  a  series  of  reductiones  ad  absurda. 
In  the  first  place,  it  is  alleged  that  subjectivism  would  make 
perceived  objects  numerically  identical  with  the  content  of 
perception.  Objectivism  here  brings  up  the  familiar  in- 
stances of  the  straight  stick  which  in  water  looks  crooked, 
the  rails  which  converge  in  the  distance,  and  the  vision  of  the 
defunct  star.  In  these  cases  the  content  of  our  perception  is 
obviously  quite  other  than  the  object  which  is  perceived. 
Subjectivism  has  an  answer  ready:  viz.,  that  the  evidence 
which  leads  us  to  believe  that  we  do  not  see  the  object  cor- 
rectly, as  well  as  that  real  object  itself,  is  content  of  the 
mind.  For  the  most  part  that  content  is  gained  by  infer- 
ence, memory,  and  other  experience  than  direct  perception, 
but  it  is  just  as  subjective.  Here  appears  what  we  already 
urged:  anything  whatever  can  be  put  in  subjective  terms. 
This  first  rebuttal  is  as  if  one  said  "  It  is  not  true  that  every 
object  on  earth  has  a  northerly  portion,  for  the  southerly 
portion  is  not  northerly."  But  even  the  southerly  portion 
has  its  own  northerly  side.  The  real  force  of  the  objection 


70  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

lies  not  in  the  argument  for  a  different  thing  external  to  the 
mind,  but  in  the  inadequacy  of  subjectivism  to  account  for 
the  distinction  between  a  real  object  and  an  imaginary  or 
erroneous  one.  The  seen  crooked  stick  is  other  than  the 
inferred  straight  stick.  All  may  be  considered  subjective; 
but  the  formula  is  so  general  as  not  to  explain  the  two  kinds 
of  subjectivity  which  are  named  real  and  unreal. 

An  objection  which  looks  more  fundamental  is  based 
upon  certain  logical  motives.  (Cf.  E.  B.  Holt,  Concept  of 
Consciousness,  p.  10).  Definitions,  it  is  asserted,  must 
always  proceed  by  reduction  of  the  complex  to  the  simple. 
E.  g.,  water  is  2H  +  O,  sulphuric  acid  is  2H  +  S  +  4.0, 
and  so  on.  Herein  is  revealed  a  deep-lying  asymmetry  of 
thought;  for  definition  cannot  work  in  the  reverse  direction. 
We  do  not  say,  hydrogen  is  that  which  makes  up  water, 
sulphuric  acid,  air,  alcohol,  etc.  Now  consciousness  is  a 
very  complex  thing;  much  more  so  than  the  objects  it  is 
aware  of,  stones,  animals,  clouds,  the  sea,  et  al.  These 
objects  then  should  not  be  defined  in  terms  of  the  subject; 
the  converse  rather  is  true. 

This  claim  raises  certain  questions  which  can  only  later 
be  discussed.  The  relative  complexity  of  consciousness  and 
its  objects  is  no  easy  matter  to  decide.  But  the  truth  of 
subjectivism  does  not  depend  on  the  decision.  There  has 
been  some  misunderstanding  here.  The  recent  foes  of 
idealism  have  asserted  that  that  view  (which  they  have 
identified  with  subjectivism)  regards  a  mind  as  a  simple 
"  end-term  "  —  a  sort  of  unanalyzable  substance  or  tertium 
quid,  a  je  ne  sais  quoi,  as  Descartes  used  to  say,  etc.  This 
may  or  may  not  be  a  just  accusation.  Certainly  idealists 
have  written  many  volumes  in  describing  this  tertium  quid. 
But  even  if  it  were  true,  that  mind  is  more  complex  than  its 
objects,  that  doctrine  is  not  so  ruinous  as  it  appears.  Let 


OBJECTIVISM  71 

mind  be  regarded  as  a  certain  very  intricate  grouping,  or 
"  polyadic  "  relation,  of  objects  and  bodily  reactions.  The 
uniqueness,  the  irreducibility,  of  that  relation  itself  which 
combines  the  terms  and  makes  them  all  into  the  one  cate- 
gory, consciousness,  is  quite  unaffected.  The  relation  itself 
is  as  simple  and  ultimate  as  anything  in  the  world.  If  the 
polyad  of  consciousness  be  itself  split  up  into  other  polyads, 
the  combination  of  the  latter  relations  which  constitutes 
the  former  is  still  unique.  This  particularity  cannot  be  re- 
moved; as  indeed  we  shall  later  see  again,  in  discussing  the 
problem  of  individuality.  There  is  always  a  legitimate 
sense  in  which  a  complex  entity  may  be  called  simple.  Now 
it  is  enough  for  the  purpose  of  subjectivism  that  every  object 
be  proved  related  to  that  simple  uniting  relation.  And  this 
proof,  of  course,  we  regard  as  having  been  given  already. 
The  asymmetry  of  definitions,  then,  and  the  complexity  of 
consciousness,  cannot  deny  our  right  to  define  objects  in 
terms  of  that  entity. 

Other  well-known  strictures  are  more  severe.  They  take 
the  form  of  fixing  absurd  consequences  upon  subjectivism; 
being  caricatures,  they  are  truly  not  arguments  but  ana- 
themas. Arranging  them  in  what  seems  to  us  the  order  of 
severity,  we  shall  begin  with  one  which  would  bring  out  the 
absurdity  by  accepting  the  first  premise  but  denying  the 
exclusive  propriety  of  the  second.  Admitting  that  every- 
thing may  be  identified  with  its  relations,  it  suggests  that  we 
substitute  some  other  relation,  in  the  second  premise,  than 
the  cognitive  one.  Thus :  every  horse  walks  on  the  ground. 
Or  at  least  a  colt  born  on  shipboard  which  dies  ere  it  reaches 
land  would  walk  on  the  ground  if  it  continued  alive  and  well. 
Therefore  horse  is  essentially  related  to  the  ground,  a  function 
of  the  ground,  or,  to  use  the  same  terms  as  we  use  of  mind, 
the  content  of  the  ground.  But  this  is  nonsense,  hence,  etc. 


72  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

The  subjectivist  need  not  be  abashed.  One  hates  to  be 
ridiculed ;  yet  what  is  considered  ridiculous  in  one  age  is  not 
always  so  deemed  in  another.  If  progress  consists  in  learn- 
ing that  certain  serious  dogmas  of  the  past  are  foolish,  it  also 
teaches  us  that  what  was  once  laughed  at  may  become  sober 
truth:  witness  certain  episodes  in  the  history  of  science. 
For  our  part,  we  unhesitatingly  admit  that  anything  can  be 
regarded  as  a  function  of  anything  else,  provided  "  func- 
tion "  is  taken  broadly  enough.  Here  lies  no  question  of 
truth  or  error,  but  one  of  utility.  And  it  is  the  imper- 
tinence rather  than  the  falsity  of  most  of  these  relational 
definitions  that  renders  them  absurd.  Their  truth  is  not 
impugned. 

The  same  confusion  lurks  in  those  "  refutations  "  which 
appeal  to  common  sense.  These  have  many  forms,  but  their 
substance  is  little  more  than  the  protest  of  Dr.  Johnson, 
when  he  kicked  the  stone  to  refute  Berkeley.  Subjectivism, 
they  declare,  paints  everything  the  colour  of  dreams;  if  it  is 
true  we  can  never  get  out  of  our  own  skins;  etc.,  etc.  This 
is  of  course  but  caricature.  It  would  not  be  taken  seriously 
if  the  emotions  were  not  engaged.  For  it  simply  pronounces 
a  formal  curse  upon  subjectivism's  ways.  The  curse  is  not 
injurious;  for  when  everything  is  called  dream,  dream  is  not 
stigma,  and  our  inability  to  pass  beyond  our  own  (mental) 
skins  need  not  limit  the  perambulation  of  our  (mental) 
organisms.  As  well  say  that  man,  shut  up  behind  eyes, 
ears,  etc.,  can  never  travel  abroad. 

The  criticism  usually  most  dreaded  is  what  is  called 
solipsism.  If  all  is  a  function  of  my  mind,  other  persons  are 
functions  of  it;  yes,  God  himself  (to  a  believer)  is  a  function 
of  me.  So  great  is  the  fear  of  this  consequence  that  the  sub- 
jectivist here  generally  renounces  his  position.  Even  the 
conscientious  Berkeley  in  substance  did  so;  Schopenhauer, 


OBJECTIVISM  73 

frank  enough  to  admit  that  solipsism  is  an  impregnable 
fortress,  spoke  mysteriously  of  passing  around  it  (World  as 
Will  and  Idea,  bk.  2  (tr.  Haldane  and  Kemp),  p.  136).  It  is 
obvious  that  considerations  of  value  here  come  into  play: 
the  whole  criticism  is  really  an  appeal  to  emotion.  We  love 
other  persons,  we  need  them,  and  we  do  as  a  matter  of  fact 
act  upon  the  assumption  of  their  reality.  And  the  present 
age  is  probably  more  alive  to  this  than  any  other.  The 
spread  of  democratic  feeling  renders  the  very  word  solus  as 
much  feared,  as  excommunication  in  the  palmy  days  of  the 
Church.  But  we  may  easily  imagine  some  Asiatic  despot  of 
olden  times  to  whose  habit  of  mind  solipsism  would  be  suit- 
able. And  in  any  case  we  must  not  unquestioningly  take 
the  prevailing  temper  of  the  age  for  the  truth;  for  though  a 
presumption  in  favour  of  truth  is  undeniable,  we  must  re- 
member that  every  time  has  its  pet  superstitions  as  well  as 
its  favourite  insights.  And  further,  it  is  just  possible  that 
solipsism  itself  has  been  misunderstood.  We  must  examine 
the  doctrine  before  we  allow  it  to  intimidate  us;  for  if 
subjectivism  is  correct  and  if  solipsism  is  a  consequence  of 
it,  solipsism  cannot  be  rejected.  It  constitutes  a  test  of  the 
good  faith  of  subjectivism. 

We  have  seen  that  it  does  not  take  away  the  reality  of 
physical  objects,  to  consider  them  dependent  upon  a  per- 
ceiving mind.  In  what  way  that  is  relevant,  now,  do  persons 
differ  from  such  objects  ?  Are  they  any  more  outside  the 
mind  ?  It  must  be  here  remembered  that  "  outside  "  means 
"  irreducible  to,  or  other  than,  the  content  of."  "  Outside  " 
cannot  then  have  degrees.  Physical  objects  are  no  more, 
and  no  less,  other  than  my  mind,  than  are  my  fellows.  It 
is  not  by  greater  externality  to  me  that  the  latter  are  dif- 
ferentiated from  physical  objects,  but  by  the  comprehensive- 
ness of  their  nature,  their  qualities,  their  value.  These 


74  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

attributes,  however,  are  quite  irrelevant  to  the  question  of 
externality.  A  friend  may  be  conceived  as  dependent  upon 
my  mind  in  a  certain  way  without  thereby  having  less  value 
or  dignity  or  richness  of  content  than  my  mind  has.  A  very 
weighty  matter  may  hang  from  a  small  hook.  As  realistic 
critics  are  wont  to  urge,  the  same  logic  applies  to  the  rela- 
tion of  other  persons  with  my  mind,  that  holds  of  external 
physical  things  in  the  same  connection.  And  it  is  this  very 
fact  that  renders  solipsism  quite  unobjectionable.  Such  de- 
pendence as  subjectivism  urges,  militates  in  no  way  against 
the  reality,  the  value,  or  the  character  of  the  dependent 
object.  As  the  world  of  Nature  is  no  less  sublime  for  being 
hooked  on  to  my  mind,  so  is  the  social  world  no  less  what 
it  is,  for  being  encircled  by  the  mental  net.  Nor  would  the 
Deity  himself  lose  one  whit  in  value  if  thus  attached  to  the 
smallest  of  his  creatures. 

It  seems  as  if  we  must  venture  to  consider  the  attempts  to 
refute  solipsism  as  misconceived.  And  among  the  refuters, 
idealists  perhaps  outnumber  all  others;  the  denial  of  this 
view  being  indeed  one  of  the  differentiae  of  idealism  from 
subjectivism.  They  have  of  course  a  perfect  right  to  try  to 
demonstrate  the  existence  of  other  selves  than  one's  own. 
It  does  not,  to  be  sure,  seem  conclusive  on  this  point  to  say 
that  we  directly  experience  other  minds  in  the  felt  struggle 
of  wills,  or  in  social  cooperation.  For  if  direct  experience  is 
made  the  ground,  there  appears  no  reason  why  we  are  not 
immediately  aware  of  another  self  in  an  automatic  mannikin 
which,  clumsily  managed,  kicks  us.  No  doubt  the  carefully 
articulated  doctrines  of  Royce  and  Baldwin,  based  on  the 
psychological  genesis  of  the  consciousness  of  self,  deserve 
thorough  study;  but  at  present  they  must  be  shelved  until 
later.  Meanwhile,  they  do  not  in  the  least  refute  solipsism. 
For  that  doctrine  admits  all  the  other  selves  you  please,  but 


OBJECTIVISM  75 

adds  that  all  can  be  read  as  content  of  one  single  subject,  my 
own  self. 

Another  attempt  to  refute  solipsism  avows  that  it  should 
go  further,  and  narrow  down  my  own  mind  to  the  present 
momentary  experience.  For  we  live  in  time;  the  past  is  not, 
nor  the  future;  the  only  actual  thing  is  the  present  event, 
and  I  am  truly  but  my  present  conscious  state.  How  then 
could  the  great  universe  hang  from  this  tiny  eyelet  ?  But 
we  might  as  well  ask,  how  can  the  little  human  eye  embrace 
the  sidereal  distances  ?  It  is  not  the  smallness  of  the  mind 
that  would  deny  its  supporting  power.  It  may  be  cut  down 
•as  far  as  you  please;  to  a  "  specious  present  "  of  two  seconds 
or  to  an  infinitesimal  instant  —  whatever  that  may  be.  It 
is  as  big  as  it  is,  and  it  is  really  here;  an  iron  hook  holds  a 
twenty-ton  mass  as  well,  if  the  hook  is  written  down  a  com- 
pound of  invisible  atoms.  This  argument  holds  no  real 
penalty;  like  subjectivism's  own  arguments  from  damnation, 
it  has  no  terrors  when  firmly  grasped. 

Nor  need  we  fear  the  objection  that  replies  to  solipsism  by 
asking:  which  self  do  you  choose  on  which  to  hang  the 
world  ?  One  self  is  just  as  good  as  any  other.  If  one  is 
chosen,  the  choice  must  be  arbitrary,  and  therefore  an  op- 
ponent may  choose  a  different  instance,  and  join  issue;  for 
both  cannot  be  true.  This  argument  is  at  bottom  an  appeal 
to  Hegelian  dialectic.  For  if  A  is  described  in  terms  of  a 
relation  to  B  and  at  the  same  time  B  in  terms  of  a  relation  to 
A ,  each  description  may  be  true,,  and  there  need  be  no  in- 
consistency short  of  that  dialectic  upon  which  absolute 
idealism  impales  everything.  Such  dialectic  must  later  be 
met;  the  point  here  is  that  for  any  thinker  who  does  not 
resort  to  it  the  mutual  relativity  of  the  diverse  selves  is  not 
an  obstacle  to  solipsism.  Any  material  structure  whose 
parts  support  one  another  offers  an  analogy:  e.  g.,  an  arch  or 


76  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

catenary.  The  truth  of  no  one  description  interferes  with 
the  truth  of  another.  With  this  we  may  leave  the  topic  of 
reducing  subjectivism  to  the  absurd. 

The  last  criticism  of  type  i  which  we  shall  mention,  forms 
a  transition  to  the  positive  case  for  objectivism.  The  sub- 
jective account  seems  rather  strained,  when  we  try  to  fit  it 
to  past  events,  unperceived  objects,  and  the  like.  The  ten- 
millionth  decimal  of  TT,  the  emotions  of  a  castaway  dying 
alone,  can  scarcely  be  equated  to  any  content  of  my  mind. 
Impressively  remote  as  such  instances  are,  does  not  sub- 
jectivism fail  to  touch  their  centre,  with  its  formula  "  they 
are  what  you  would  experience  if  you  were  situated  thus  and 
so  "  ?  These  inaccessible  contents  now  are,  or  have  been; 
hypothetical  phrases,  however  skillful,  never  succeed  in 
indicating  actual  existence.  This  is  true,  indeed,  urges  the 
realist,  with  regard  to  present  perceived  objects;  for  this 
table  before  me  contains  much  that  I  shall  never  know. 
But  the  inadequacy  of  the  subjective  formula  is  more  ob- 
vious with  instances  which  our  immediate  experience  does 
not  compass.  The  crucial  example  of  this  sort,  is  perhaps, 
at  the  other  extreme  of  remoteness,  viz.,  the  brain  itself. 
Who  has  perceived  his  own  brain  ?  Least  of  all  himself; 
yet  he  credits  it  with  reality.  But,  replies  the  subjectivist, 
he  has  thought  of  it;  it  is  object-of -his- thought.  Yes,  but 
his  thought  depends  upon  the  processes  of  that  very  brain ; 
the  brain  determines  the  thought.  The  brain's  reality  must 
then  consist  in  more  than  being  a  thought-object.  The  ex- 
ternal, independent  being  of  such  things  must  surely  be 
granted.  And  therewith  subjectivism  seems  at  last  to 
break  down. 

The  objection  is,  we  believe,  the  gravest  which  type  i  has 
to  meet.  In  fact,  the  type  here  reaches  that  critical  point  of 
which  we  spoke  in  Chapter  III.  The  conditional  "  would-if  " 


OBJECTIVISM  77 

may  be  true,  so  far  as  it  goes,  but  how  can  it  go  far  enough  ? 
There  appears  to  be  a  definite,  positive  character  about 
things  which  does  not  take  the  subjective  paint.  To  Berke- 
ley's question  about  the  meaning  of  existence,  objectivism 
now  answers  "  existence  means  that  which  is  beyond  the 
relation  to  my  mind."  If  subjectivism  is  to  meet  this  new 
turn  it  must  be  transformed.  As  water  heated  to  512° 
Fahrenheit  preserves  it  existence  by  adopting  a  new  form, 
so  subjectivism  at  this  its  critical  point  must  resort  to  a 
novel  point  of  view.  And  as  the  liquid  becomes  a  gas,  so  the 
substance  of  subjectivism  at  this  juncture  assumes  an  airier 
texture.  By  what  device  is  it  enabled  to  do  this  ?  By  re- 
sorting to  a  new  and  subtler  category :  potentiality.  Recall 
Mill's  definition  of  matter  as  the  "  permanent  possibility  of 
sensation."  Subjectivism  says  that  an  actual  past  event, 
when  not  really  related  to  the  mind  by  knowledge,  is  an  in- 
stance of  the  potentiality  of  such  relationship;  a  specific 
potentiality,  too,  such  that  the  knowledge,  if  it  comes,  must 
be  of  a  certain  definite  character.  The  lonely  sailor's  pangs, 
and  the  uncomputed  decimal  of  IT,  are  to  me  definite  poten- 
tial objects.  And  potentiality,  as  here  used,  we  must  re- 
member, is  a  positive  concept.  It  means  that  certain  terms 
await  being  known  to  my  mind.  They  may  never  be  known ; 
just  so  the  pull  of  gravitation  makes  the  slate  tend  to  fall 
from  the  roof,  though  it  may  never  actually  fall.  Perhaps 
we  are  told  that  this  possibility  would  have  no  sense  unless 
there  were  minds  in  whom  it  might  be  fulfilled,  and  there- 
fore the  past  existence  of  this  earth  as  a  molten  mass  could 
not,  when  there  were  no  minds,  be  such  a  potentiality.  That 
is  a  misunderstanding  of  the  term  "  potentiality."  The 
word  designates  a  positive  attribute:  when  certain  condi- 
tions —  the  presence  of  attentive  minds  —  are  fulfilled,  the 
cognitive  relation  will  supervene.  Such,  at  least,  seems  to 


78  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

be  a  usage  of  the  category  common  enough  to  justify  our 
appropriation  of  it  for  this  occasion.  Now  the  actuality  of 
the  past  event  may  always  be  truly  described  by  this  attri- 
bute. To  be  beyond  relation  to  the  mind,  is  to  have  poten- 
tial relation,  rather  than  actual,  to  the  mind.  If  there  is 
anything  about  "  existence  "  which  "  potential  "  does  not 
plumb,  that  remainder  in  turn  must  be  given  an  intelligible 
meaning;  and  that  meaning  must  be  stated  in  terms  of 
actual  or  possible  human  experience.  The  molten  earth  of  a 
million  million  years  ago,  and  my  own  brain-cells  now,  are 
truly  influences,  potent  in  the  stream  of  our  present  life, 
which  would  guide  us,  did  we  seek  the  information,  up  to  the 
goal  of  belief  in  these  objects  of  thought.  Subjectivism 
does  not  deny  the  reality  of  them.  It  admits  it,  but  straight- 
way adds,  that  they  all  have  the  attribute,  potential  relation 
to  a  mind.  And  let  them  determine  the  course  of  our 
thought  never  so  stringently,  they  will  hardly  by  that  means 
escape  relationship  to  our  thought.  The  transcendent,  the 
external,  the  independent,  the  remote  —  all  these  are  by 
the  device  of  "  potentiality  "  attached  to  the  mind.  How- 
ever thin  be  the  thread  which  binds,  it  is  as  genuine  a  bond 
as  the  direct  contact  of  observation.  Thus  subjectivism  pre- 
serves its  truth,  as  physical  energy  accomplishes  its  con- 
servation, by  turning  to  the  potential  when  threatened  with 
destruction. 

Subjectivism,  then,  is  not  refuted  by  the  case  of  the  actual 
and  unknown  object.  It  is  hit,  and  hit  hard ;  but  though  it 
staggers,  it  does  not  fall.  Yet  it  keeps  its  feet  only  by  cling- 
ing to  an  external  support.  Hereafter  it  must  use  the 
category  of  potentiality  as  its  crutch;  not  a  convenient 
instrument  of  progress,  perhaps,  but  usable  for  purposes  of 
locomotion.  And  if  the  foe  says  that  potentiality  is  but  a 
lame  substitute  for  actuality,  let  us  remember  that  since 


OBJECTIVISM  79 

everything  that  reality  means  can  be  expressed  by  its  aid, 
however  awkwardly,  subjectivism  never  fails  to  meet  the 
demands  of  the  real  world  for  description.  It  may  not  —  to 
vary  the  figure  —  always  have  its  cash  on  hand,  but  the 
cheque  on  the  bank  of  actual  sense-experience  is  good 
enough.  Nevertheless,  subjectivism  has  reached  its  critical 
point  in  that  it  has  to  treat  with  these  unknown  objects  in- 
directly and  by  a  medium.  Another  possible  way  of  treating 
reality  has  appeared,  and  a  more  economical  way;  for  the 
objectivist  need  not  trouble  himself  with  the  clumsy  for- 
mula "  possibility  of  experience."  That  phrase  of  course 
would  not  be  clumsy  if  it  aided  us  in  understanding  the 
character  of  past  history,  of  our  brain-cells,  et  al.;  it  is  not 
its  length  but  its  infertility,  that  renders  it  void.  Where 
we  are  concerned  with  objects  which  we  can  see  and  touch, 
the  formula  "  reality  is  content  of  my  mind  "  is  in  its  way 
useful;  for  it  tells  us  to  get  directly  in  touch  with  reality. 
But  where  the  subject-matter  of  inquiry  is  beyond  vision  or 
thought,  "  potential  "  sight  and  inference  is  unprofitable. 
We  do  not  wish  to  dwell  upon  a  relationship  to  mind  which 
does  not  reveal  the  character  of  those  objects.  Subjectivism, 
in  fine,  is  unable  to  give  any  clew  to  the  character  of  that 
world  which  extends  far  beyond  human  experience.  Really 
subjective  though  that  world  is  —  for  subjectivism  is  true 
and  irrefutable  —  it  is  not  its  subjectivity  that  explains  its 
make-up  and  behaviour.  Another  factor  has  intruded  it- 
self, which  must  be  invoked  if  we  are  to  do  that,  viz.,  the 
character  of  the  objects  as  they  are  in  themselves,  and 
neglecting  though  not  denying  their  relation  to  minds. 

To  insist  upon  this  other  factor  is  the  positive  contribu- 
tion of  objectivism.  Unable  to  slay  its  opponent,  it  may 
disentangle  itself  from  the  deadly  struggle,  get  upon  its  own 
legs,  and  utter  its  message.  We  have  now  to  hear  what  it 
says. 


80  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

The  affirmative  argument  has  been  used  by  many,  viz., 
Kant  (Refutation  of  Idealism,  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  tr. 
Miiller,  Supp.  21),  G.  E.  Moore  (Mind,  1903,  433-453),  G. 
S.  Fullerton  (Introduction  to  Philosophy,  ch.  Ill),  H.  Liide- 
mann  (Das  Erkennen  und  die  Welturtheile,  pp.  88-89)  and 
others.  It  has  two  parts:  (i)  the  object  is  other  than  the 
subject,  (2)  the  object  is  independent  of  the  subject. 

The  first  thesis  is  proved  by  adoption  of  the  enemy's  tac- 
tics. Give  the  subjectivist  free  play;  offer  no  objection 
when  he  says  that  "  every  object  is  for  a  subject."  Then 
reply:  a  relation  may  be  read  in  either  direction.  If,  in 
knowledge,  object  is  a  function  of  the  subject,  that  truth 
implies  the  converse:  the  subject  is  a  function  of  the  object. 
All  cannot  be  put  within  the  subject,  for  the  subject  would 
then  have  no  relation  to  anything  and  there  could  be  no 
knowledge.  Knowledge  is  of  something.  "  If  there  is 
knowledge  there  must  first  be  something  to  be  known." 
(H.  A.  Prichard,  Kant's  Theory  of  Knowledge,  p.  118). 
Hence  the  distinction,  the  otherness,  between  subject  and 
object,  is  patent;  the  one  term  is  as  ultimate  as  the  other. 

This  first  argument  turns  the  tables  on  Berkeley,  but  it 
must  be  noticed  that  it  is  a  moderate  position.  It  does  not 
overturn  them,  reducing  all  to  a  function  of  the  object.  It  is 
not  an  attempt  at  monism,  as  subjectivism  was;  it  meets 
the  extreme  by  a  temperate  attitude.  Two  irreducible  kinds 
of  being,  it  insists  there  are:  minds  and  objects  or  things. 
Being  no  radical  position,  it  does  not  have  to  resort  to  so 
elaborate  a  defence  as  the  two  premises  of  subjectivism; 
it  does  not  need  to  raise  the  question  of  "  internal  "  or 
"  external  "  relations.  For  if  relations  are  internal,  then 
subject  is  as  much  dependent  on  object,  as  object  upon  sub- 
ject, and  if  they  are  external,  then  object  and  subject  are 
independent.  The  whole  point  of  the  plea  is  for  dualism; 


OBJECTIVISM  8 1 

it  insists  upon  numerical  distinction  between  subject  and 
object. 

The  second  purpose  is  to  prove  the  independence  of  the 
object  —  which  has  generally  been  understood  to  mean  that 
objects  exist  when  or  where  there  is  no  subject  aware  of 
them.  That  this  is  so,  seems  clear  enough:  science  and 
common  sense  are  based  upon  the  belief  in  past  history  of 
the  earth,  unknown  stars,  and  all  such  instances  as  we 
noticed  under  the  last  objection  to  subjectivism.  Objects 
were  before  we  knew  them,  and  they  endure  through  the 
interstices  of  our  consciousness.  It  is  not  so  much  that  this 
unknown  existence  is  demonstrated,  as  that  we  dare  not 
doubt  it.  It  cannot  be  proved  that  the  tree  in  the  forest 
remains  when  no  one  sees  it;  that  it  does  not  remain,  is  not 
self-contradictory.  It  does  not  contradict  anything  that  we 
observe,  that  the  tree  should  vanish  when  we  cease  to  be 
aware  of  it.  It  is  simply  that  it  would  do  violence  to  our 
assumption  of  the  uniformity  of  Nature,  the  regularity  of 
causation,  and  other  fundamental  axioms  dear  to  the  heart 
of  reason.  These  axioms  are,  as  our  logic  text-books  teach 
us,  incapable  of  demonstration,  and  consequently  the  falsity 
of  what  goes  against  them  is  incapable  of  demonstration. 
And  as  they  are  in  this  sense  dogmatic,  so  is  our  belief  in  the 
reality  of  unknown  objects  dogmatic.  Of  course  this  does 
not  mean  that  it  is  mistaken,  or  even  doubtful.  Objectivism 
is  quite  right  in  declaring  the  independence  of  many  objects 
upon  mind,  in  the  sense  that  the  former  exist  in  the  absence 
of  any  actual  cognitive  relation  to  the  latter. 

But  this  sort  of  independence  is  not  inconsistent  with  the 
truth  of  subjectivism:  that  we  have  already  seen.  The  les- 
son which  it  really  reads  to  its  rival  is  that  we  cannot  tell  by 
means  of  the  subjectivist  formula  what  objects  do  perdure, 
or  did  precede  our  minds,  and  what  the  character  of  those 


82  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

objects  is  or  was.  This  is  not  a  matter  of  independence,  but 
of  inability  to  answer  a  certain  question,  to  satisfy  search  for 
information.  When,  then,  the  objectivist  speaks  of  the 
independence  of  external  things  upon  my  consciousness,  he 
cannot,  if  he  is  correctly  interpreted,  be  refuted.  And  here 
we  must  notice  an  attempted  rebuttal  of  his  thesis  which 
really  shows  the  unassailable  nature  of  that  thesis. 

It  runs  somewhat  as  follows:  —  objects  cannot  be  inde- 
pendent of  the  subject,  or  the  subject's  idea.  For  if  they 
could,  then  the  relation  between  the  nature  of  the  object  and 
the  content  of  our  idea  of  it  would  be  one  of  indifference. 
The  "  mental  state  "  that  would  go  with  the  perception  of  a 
wild  bull  might  just  as  well  be  the  same  as  the  one  appro- 
priate to  a  glass  of  milk.  If  the  object  does  not  depend  upon 
the  idea,  then  the  idea  is  never  a  sure  indication  of  the 
object.  But  it  is.  Hence,  etc.  (Royce,  World  and  Individual, 
I,  pp.  134-136).' 

Of  course  the  argument  proves  only  that  in  correct  knowl- 
edge, and  granting  already  two  things,  object  and  idea,  the 
former  is  determined  by  the  latter.  This  assumption  of 
correct  knowledge  however  is  equivalent  to  the  assumption 
of  an  instance  where  object  and  idea  correspond  (whatever 
that  may  mean).  Given  correspondence,  then  each  must 
determine  the  other.  But  the  realist's  position  is  that  there 
need  not  be  correct  knowledge  wherever  there  is  an  object. 
There  may  be  error,  or  ignorance,  or  total  absence  of  aware- 
ness. The  alleged  refutation  of  realism  assumes  the  one 
particular  instance  where  alone  realism  would  grant  the 
point,  and  argues  from  this  to  other  instances  where  it 
would  not  grant  the  assumption.  The  fallacy  here  seems  to 
be  the  converse  fallacy  of  accident. 

Such  in  outline  is  the  case  for  objectivism.  It  is  now  our 
task  to  appraise  the  respective  merits  of  the  two  first  types. 


OBJECTIVISM  83 

It  has  so  far  seemed  that  they  may  very  well  both  be  true,  if 
properly  defined;  but  the  battle  between  them  has  been, 
and  today  is,  severe,  and  carried  out  with  exquisite  refine- 
ments not  yet  mentioned.  Not  easily  could  our  brief  adjudi- 
cation of  their  claims,  as  above  set  forth,  be  accepted  by  the 
present-day  partisan.  We  must  make  up  our  minds  to  a 
more  penetrating  analysis  of  the  quarrel.  And  this  will 
repay  us  the  more,  because  out  of  the  bitter  antagonism  has 
grown  a  third  type,  whose  function  as  peacemaker  entitles 
it  to  a  distinct  place  among  the  ever-recurring  philosophical 
reforms.  Our  next  topic  is  then  the  balancing  of  the  first 
two  and  the  consequent  third  type. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

THE  revolt  of  objectivism  against  the  subjective  phi- 
losophy leads  to  a  reaction  on  the  part  of  the  latter,  and 
this  to  a  new  reaction  against  the  subjectivist,  and  so  on 
indefinitely.    The  motives  of  revolt  and  reaction  are  both 
emotional  and  intellectual. 

Realism  sees  perfectly  well  that  its  rival's  claim  to  reduce 
all  to  spirit  is  inconsequential.  The  kind  of  spirit  into 
which  the  world  turns  when  it  is  seen  to  be  "  content  of 
mind  "  has  as  little  of  the  spirituality  for  which  religion 
yearns,  as  has  that  fine  matter  into  which  the  materialist 
analyzes  the  soul.  Nor  does  subjectivism  gratify  the  in- 
stinct for  self -expansion;  am  I  any  the  greater  because  the 
world  is  content  of  my  consciousness  ?  As  well  say  that  an 
angle  of  30°  becomes  greater  when  it  includes  within  its 
sides  the  sun  and  moon.  And  as  for  those  fleeting  moments 
of  reverie  when  all  the  world  is  felt  to  be  within  me,  they  dis- 
solve before  the  activities  of  living  and  the  scientific  atti- 
tude; they  may  well  be  pathological.  Subjectivism  has  not 
fulfilled  its  promise  to  the  instincts  of  man.  Nor  has  it  done 
better  for  philosophy's  age-long  quarrels.  We  have  seen 
that  it  solves  no  antinomies.  On  the  contrary,  it  has  added 
new  difficulties.  It  has  unearthed  a  new  realm  within  phi- 
losophy; a  realm  whose  dissensions  are  no  less  than  those  of 
the  other  parts  —  viz.,  theory  of  knowledge;  and  one  ap- 
parently disconnected  with  the  outer  world,  the  universe 
which  religion  contemplates  and  science  investigates.  Away 

84 


THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE  85 

with  this  specious  and  self-centred  attitude!  Let  us  betake 
ourselves  to  the  open  air  where  reside  the  real  external 
objects.  Realism  studies  not  the  self  but  the  world.  Sub- 
jectivism's map  is  but  a  thin  line  drawn  across  the  paper; 
realism  will  fill  in  specific  outlines,  colours,  contours,  details 
that  make  it  profitable.  Such  we  may  suppose  are  the 
objectivisms  feelings. 

On  the  other  hand,  subjectivism  sees  quite  as  clearly  that 
objectivism  has  garnered  no  more  than  itself,  for  the  re- 
ligious needs.  Where  is  the  realistic  proof  (or  even  disproof) 
of  God,  or  of  any  potent  spirit  ?  Externality  is  not  good 
enough  to  worship.  Does  realism's  formula  "  independent 
and  external  to  mind  "  contain  a  single  germ  of  fruitfulness 
more  than  subjectivism's  ?  As  the  latter  gave  us  no  spirit 
that  was  worth  taking,  so  this  new  phrase  reveals  no  char- 
acter of  that  external  world  worth  knowing.  Is  the  external 
more  fitted  for  scientific  investigation  than  the  internal 
object  ?  More  interesting  ?  More  stimulating  to  the  spirit 
of  research  ?  Not  in  the  slightest  degree.  One  may  be  a 
good  scientist  and  at  the  same  time  a  subjectivist:  of 
Poincare,  Pearson,  Mach,  and  other  philosophical  scientists 
of  our  day,  how  many  are  realists  ?  And  why  is  not  the 
history  of  a  mind's  contents  as  interesting  as  the  history  of 
an  external  world  ?  In  truth,  it  is  not  the  question  "  of 
what  is  it  the  history  ?  "  but  "  what  are  the  events  of  that 
history  ?  "  that  furnishes  the  interest.  And  realism  gives 
no  clew  to  these  events;  it  is  every  whit  as  formal  and 
unproductive  as  its  correlative  type. 

In  respect  to  such  motives  and  needs,  the  balance  seems 
to  be  pretty  even.  And  indeed  the  same  is  true  of  the  intel- 
lectual grounds  of  these  types:  there  is  a  perfect  deadlock 
between  the  arguments.  This  we  have  now  to  make  plain. 


86  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Objectivism  forever  repeats  the  accusation  that  subjec- 
tivism overlooks  the  distinction  between  the  mental  and  the 
external ;  subjectivism  forever  replies  that  there  is  a  deeper 
unity  beneath  the  distinction.  The  one  distinguishes  within 
an  identity,  the  other  identifies  through  the  distinction. 

Granting,  perhaps,  that  all  is  at  last  reduced  to  mental 
content,  realism  points  out  that  this  content  still  implies  an 
objective  reference.  To  distinguish  illusion  or  fancy  from 
reality,  we  must  admit  that  some  contents,  subjective 
though  they  are,  at  least  refer  to  an  external  object,  while 
others  have  no  such  reference.  This  object  as  it  is  in  itself 
is  the  reality;  it  must  be  distinguished  from  the  object  as  it 
appears  to  us,  i.  e.,  the  content-of-the-mind.  Our  knowl- 
edge, then,  does  not  directly  touch  objects  as  they  are  in 
themselves ;  we  have  before  us  only  mental  content.  Things 
themselves  are  not  presented  but  represented;  and  thus 
arise  the  "  representative  "  theory  of  knowledge  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  thing-in-itself.  That  theory  is  but  the  con- 
sequence of  the  distinction  between  content-of-mind  and 
external  reality.  And  encouraged  by  this  creation,  objec- 
tivism seeks  out  new  arguments  from  those  ambiguous 
phenomena,  the  secondary  qualities,  from  colour-blindness, 
from  memory,  from  illusions,  etc.  These  all  emphasize  the 
difference  between  subject  and  object.  Smells,  tastes, 
sounds  and  colours  are  not  in  the  objects  themselves.  They 
might  be;  there  is  no  contradiction  in  it,  but  the  evidence  of 
science  makes  the  supposition  unnecessary.  The  colour- 
blind man  sees  gray  where  there  is  red.  We  remember  the 
date  of  our  graduation  from  school  —  but  the  event  is  no 
longer,  like  the  memory,  a  present  fact.  Sometimes  too  we 
remember  what  never  was.  And  we  see  the  moon  colossal 
on  the  horizon,  the  fly  on  the  window  as  a  bird  in  the  dis- 
tance, and  in  many  other  ways  falsely  perceive.  All  these 


THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE  87 

cases  point  to  the  disparity  of  our  mental  state  with  the 
reality.  Perhaps  a  more  striking  one  is  that  suggested  by 
Professor  Pearson's  note  (Grammar  of  Science,  3d  ed.,  p. 
394).  If  a  man  per  impossible  flew  away  from  the  earth  with 
a  velocity  exceeding  that  of  light,  he  would  see  events  on 
earth  transpiring  backward.  This  picture  certainly  would 
not  be  his  own  imagination,  but  a  deliverance  of  vision.  Yet 
it  could  not  be  called  anything  but  subjective;  for  time  is 
irrevocable.  Must  the  subjectivist  not  then  admit  that 
the  representative  theory  of  knowledge  is  correct,  and 
objectivism  justified  ? 

Subjectivism,  however,  finds  it  easy  to  reduce  this  differ- 
ence to  the  absurd.  If  the  mind  and  its  object  are  really 
distinct,  you  have  two  ultimate  substances,  even  as  had  the 
Cartesians  and  the  Occasionalists,  and  the  other  schools  of 
the  seventeenth-century  philosophy ;  and  we  know  what  per- 
plexities, disagreements,  insoluble  problems  they  got  into. 
(This  is  rather  a  favourite  argument  today,  by  the  way, 
with  non-sub jectivists ;  abolish  the  Cartesian  dualism!) 
How  can  two  so  disparate  things  as  res  cogitans  and  res 
extensa  affect  each  other  —  as  in  voluntary  movement  of  the 
arm  —  or  if  they  do  not  so,  how  is  it  they  happen  to  be 
parallel  ?  The  efforts  of  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz  and  their 
successors  up  to  the  present  tune,  to  solve  these  difficult 
questions,  have  not  resulted  in  any  consensus.  Above  all, 
how  can  we  explain  knowledge,  if  objects  are  never  directly 
present  to  consciousness  ?  Sooner  or  later  we  must  attain 
the  objects,  or  skepticism  results.  If  we  never  have  the 
objects  themselves,  how  should  we  know  that  what  we  do 
have  —  our  thoughts,  our  sense-data  —  are  different  from 
the  objects  ?  Reason  at  least  must  be  capable  of  knowing 
the  things  as  they  are  in  themselves.  If  we  do  not  admit 
this,  then  the  "  thing-in-itself  "  becomes  a  meaningless 


88  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

form  of  words.  No:  it  is  fatal  to  knowledge,  to  insist  on 
thoroughgoing  distinction  between  the  content  of  my  mind 
and  the  object  it  knows.  Sometimes  at  least  the  two  must 
coincide.  The  distinction  must  not  exclude  identity.  All 
the  distinctions,  in  fact,  urged  by  dualism  may  be  admitted; 
but  along  with  them  must  go  that  immediate  union  of  mind 
and  its  object  without  which  there  could  be  no  knowledge 
at  all. 

But  do  not  the  divergences  preclude  the  identity  between 
subjective  state  and  objective  fact  ?  No,  we  answer:  the 
same  colour  —  so  far  as  we  can  see  —  may  be  found  in  two 
oranges,  the  same  name  may  belong  to  two  different  men. 
There  is  nothing,  short  of  dialectical  arguments  which  we 
shall  later  consider,  to  show  a  priori  that  two  things  may  not 
be  identical  in  some  ways  and  at  the  same  time  different  in 
other  ways.  As  two  circles  can  intersect  in  part,  so  may  the 
tree  which  I  see  be  in  part  coincident  with  the  image  of  it 
which  I  entertain.  The  shape  of  it  may  be  identical  in  both 
instances,  while  the  estimated  distance  from  me  is  not  the 
true  distance,  and  while  the  colour  of  the  leaves  is  but  a 
product  of  my  sense-organs.  The  dualities  which  the  repre- 
sentative theory  insists  upon  need  not  rule  out  the  identity 
for  which  a  direct,  presentative  theory  stands.  And  even 
the  dualities  may  be  brought  under  the  subjective  formula. 
We  need  only  to  distinguish  between  one  kind  of  mental 
content  and  another  kind.  In  correct  perception  or  thought 
or  memory,  we  may  say  that  the  object  is  the  content  pres- 
ent here  and  now  in  the  mind;  in  illusions,  imaginations, 
and  the  like,  we  may  say  that  the  real  object  is  a  species  of 
potential  content  of  the  mind :  that  which  we  should  see  if 
we  but  patiently  awaited  evidence.  How  this  last  is  put, 
depends  upon  one's  theory  of  error.  Subjectivism  may 
always  return  to  its  original  device  of  employing  potential- 


THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE  89 

ity.  The  distinction  between  object  and  mental  state,  upon 
which  objectivism  justly  insists,  becomes  only  a  distinction 
between  kinds  of  mental  content.  It  may  be  described  as 
that  between  what  we  perceive  and  what  we  infer  —  for  the 
inferred  is  what  would  be  perceived  by  a  perfect  observer; 
or  it  may  be  straightway  put  in  terms  of  actual  and  poten- 
tial. But  ever  the  distinction  is  brought  within  the  mind, 
and  the  exclusion  of  objects  from  mind  is  annulled. 

If  the  advantage  does  not,  from  the  epistemological  point 
of  view,  incline  to  either,  no  more  does  it  from  the  meta- 
physical side.  Subjectivism  could  not  give  any  indication 
as  to  the  contours  of  reality;  it  found  its  critical  point  in  that 
very  conception,  reality,  which  it  would  define.  For  sub- 
jectivism, reducing  external  objects  always  to  potentially 
mental  objects,  left  untouched  just  that  element  of  actuality 
upon  which  its  opponent  most  insisted.  Taxed  with  doing 
so,  the  subjectivist  returned  to  the  charge  with  the  same 
weapons,  and  reduced  this  residue  in  turn  to  a  further  poten- 
tial object-of-mind;  and  indeed,  however  often  he  was 
taxed  with  inadequacy,  he  would  once  more  make  up  the 
deficit  in  the  same  way.  Ever  something  more  lies  before 
him,  and  as  fast  as  he  puts  his  net  over  it,  still  something 
more  arises.  Yet  never  is  anything  precisely  named  which 
cannot  be  brought  under  his  formula.  And  the  objectivist 
is  in  a  like  situation.  He  cannot  explain  how  the  two  dif- 
ferent ultimate  entities,  object  and  idea,  res  extensa  and  res 
cogitans,  come  to  fuse  in  direct  knowledge.  He  must  always 
find  some  distinction  between  idea  and  object  —  else  it  will 
not  be  true  that  the  one  knows  the  other.  If  knowledge  is 
bare  identity  of  the  two,  it  is  no  relation  at  all;  it  will  not  be 
I-knowing-the-object,  but  just  I  or  just  the  object.  And  he 
can  always  find  some  distinction,  for  doubtless  perfect  union 
of  idea  and  thing  is  never  by  man  obtained.  Yet  he  will 


90  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

again  be  pointed  to  the  identity  of  idea  and  object  —  with- 
out which  there  could  be  no  knowledge.  As  the  subjec- 
tivist's  critical  point  was  the  difference  between  idea  and 
fact,  so  the  objectivisms  is  the  fusion,  the  identity,  of  them. 
Either  when  confronted  with  the  critical  attribute  can  de- 
clare that  his  own  description  may  be  added;  but  he  can- 
not make  his  description  destroy  the  truth  of  the  other  or 
account  for  it. 

Again  the  balance  remains  even  between  these  deadly 
rivals.  The  issue,  at  bottom,  centres  around  the  sameness 
and  the  difference  of  the  mind's  contents  and  the  real  object. 
Both  attributes  are  correct  descriptions.  But  if  the  advocate 
of  either  one  would  deny  the  positive  contention  of  the  other, 
he  is  open  to  refutation.  And  it  is  because,  owing  to  the  in- 
herent partisanship  of  human  nature,  each  antagonist  does 
just  this,  that  his  doctrine  must  be  followed  by  a  revolt  to 
the  other  side,  which  revolt  must  for  the  same  reason  lead  to 
a  counter-revolt,  and  so  on.  Thus  the  quarrel  becomes  self- 
perpetuating:  it  leads  to  an  endless  tilt.  The  resulting 
deadlock  is  exactly  what  we  find  in  the  philosophical 
discussions  of  our  time. 

But  this  deadlock  is  not  the  whole  of  the  phenomenon. 
Each  view,  however  right  in  its  positive  contention,  is,  as 
James  used  to  say,  "  thin  ";  it  is  infertile  to  explain  any 
specific  fact  of  the  universe.  At  its  critical  point  it  becomes 
gaseous.  Neither  sheds  any  light  upon  those  problems 
which  concern  man's  more  lasting  interests;  neither  min- 
isters to  those  practical  and  emotional  motives  which 
secretly  urge  its  advocate  to  espouse  its  cause.  As  we  shall 
learn,  when  all  the  evidence  from  the  study  of  the  various 
types  is  in,  these  two  traits  of  infertility  and  exclusive- 
ness  are  closely  related;  at  present  we  only  note  their 
influence. 


THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE  91 

Our  diagnosis  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  no  one,  so  far 
as  we  know,  whether  subjectivist  or  objectivist,  has  ever  got 
beyond  that  issue  itself  to  tell  us  anything  that  it  involves 
about  the  structure  and  functioning  of  the  real  world.  The 
original  philosophical  problem,  which  alone  gave  justifica- 
tion and  significance  to  our  whole  inquiry,  has  disappeared 
from  view. 

But  this  analysis  will  of  course  hardly  be  convincing  to 
those  who  have  staked  their  philosophical  life  upon  one  side 
of  this  issue.  Probably  the  hardened  epistemologist  will 
accuse  us  of  treating  the  whole  affair  too  flippantly.  We 
have  made  it  a  formal  a  priori  sort  of  thing,  whereas  he  will 
declare  it  to  be  an  empirical  question,  soluble  only  by  the 
"  living  detail  "  of  fact.  Of  course  neither  side  has  yet 
triumphed,  for  there  is  no  general  consensus;  but  wait  until 
more  empirical  evidence  is  collected!  Unfortunately,  we 
reply,  we  have  waited  some  two  thousand  years;  from  the 
time  of  Protagoras  until  now.  And  as  for  empirical  argu- 
ments, we  admit  that  we  know  of  none  that  have  not  been 
already  mentioned.  But  further,  according  to  the  very 
nature  of  the  problem,  it  seems  that  no  evidence  drawn  from 
the  specific  properties  of  objects  could  be  decisive.  For  it  is 
not  the  question  whether  objects  are  long,  or  short,  round, 
permanent,  effective,  or  otherwise  concretely  qualified,  but 
whether  any  of  these  attributes  imply  externality  or  inter- 
nality  to  the  mind.  The  issue  itself  is,  we  must  conclude, 
quite  formal  and  barren. 

To  those  who  are  sincerely  interested  in  the  philosophical 
problem,  the  situation  cannot  be  other  than  intolerable.  Of 
course  we  may  get  used  to  anything  —  as  we  are  used  to  dis- 
ease and  death;  and  one  may  say,  why  fret  about  the 
inevitable  ?  But  men  do  endeavour  to  diminish  the  death- 
rate  and  to  prevent  sickness;  and  we  are  confronted  by  a 


92  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

somewhat  analogous  task.  We  need  not  rehearse  the 
motives  which  have  led  to  our  undertaking.  Enough  that 
some  outlet  must  be  discovered. 

Short  of  skepticism,  there  seem  to  be  two  possible  escapes. 
One  might  either  combine  these  two  views  or  reject  both, 
adopting  some  third  view  which  has  no  dualism.  The  syn- 
thetic method  we  shall  take  up  later;  we  now  consider  the 
simplifying  mode  of  solution.  It  has  been  offered,  not  many 
decades  since,  as  the  one  way  out  of  the  modern  impasse. 
It  goes  by  the  name  of  the  "  Philosophy  of  Pure  Expe- 
rience." This  type  is  quite  modern,  for  it  is  essentially  a 
reform  wherein  philosophy  has  become  self-conscious.  It 
was  offered  by  Avenarius  and  others  with  the  avowed  object 
of  abolishing  the  above  epistemological  controversies  (cf. 
Der  Menschliche  Weltbegriff,  p.  i).  To  the  whole  system  of 
this  difficult  writer  we  do  not  attempt  tg  be  just;  a  certain 
influential  current  which  is  found  in  it  is  our  sole  concern. 
This  current  has  spread  rapidly,  combining  in  other  writers 
with  other  currents,  yet  retaining  a  dominant  role:  as  for 
instance  in  the  writings  of  Professors  Ward,  James,  Dewey, 
Petzoldt,  and  Mach.  Roughly,  it  is  the  doctrine  that  the 
dualism  of  inner-outer,  or  subject-object,  is  philosophi- 
cally unjustified.  Ultimately,  reality  is  neither;  it  is 
"  experience." 

Practical  and  emotional  motives  for  this  view  are  not 
obvious.  The  reason  is  that  it  tends,  as  we  shall  see,  to 
obliterate  distinctions.  The  self,  matter,  past  history  of  a 
planet,  men's  thoughts  —  all  these  are  melted  down,  fused, 
into  the  one  broth  of  "  experience."  The  difficulties  of 
dualism  are  to  be  avoided  by  our  denying  that  the  dualism 
is  real;  all  is  of  one  substance,  "  experience."  Now  practi- 
cal and  affective  motives  use  distinctions  of  good  and  bad; 
they  seek  specific  gains  and  are  directed  towards  specific 


THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE  93 

objects.  The  concept  "  pure  experience  "  furnishes  by  its 
own  power  no  clews  to  guide  our  discrimination;  it  does  not 
indicate  the  relative  advantage  of  this  or  that  part  of  reality. 
It  leaves  that  to  the  unfolding  of  experience  in  our  particular 
lives;  and  doubtless  rightly.  But  in  thus  leaving  it,  the 
concept  shows  its  indifference  to  all  particular  instincts.  It 
holds  out  no  promise  to  the  religious  impulse,  to  the  search 
for  happiness,  the  instinct  for  self -expansion,  the  spirit  of 
scientific  research;  whatever  we  find  we  find,  and  all  alike 
are  to  be  dubbed  experience.  It  is  as  if  it  said  "  Experience 
is  what  you  find  when  you  consult  your  experience  "; 
which  amounts  to  no  more  than  the  command  "  Search!  " 
The  grounds  of  this  third  type  are,  as  far  as  we  can  ascertain, 
wholly  theoretical. 

We  proceed,  then,  to  define  and  examine  those  grounds. 
In  the  title  "  pure  experience,"  the  word  "  pure  "  indicates 
that  reality  in  the  last  analysis  is  neither  subjective  nor 
objective.  "  Pure  "  is  an  eliminating  term.  However  posi- 
tive  reality  still  may  be,  its  material  is  not  to  be  described 
by  any  other  universal  characteristic  than  just  "  expe- 
rience." Its  realistic  opponents  are  wont  to  say  that  this 
last  word  carries  a  subjective  sense;  adherents  of  the  view 
deny  it.  The  doctrine  resembles  subjectivism,  however,  in 
one  respect;  it  accepts  implicitly  what  we  have  called  the 
principle  of  internal  relations.  A  thing,  a  mind,  a  quality,  is 
to  be  estimated  in  the  light  of  the  context  in  which  it  lies; 
according  to  a  rather  favourite  phrase,  in  the  "  warp  and 
woof  of  experience."  Since  all  the  parts  and  particulars  of 
this  great  garment  of  experience  are  thus  thoroughly  inter- 
penetrating, there  can  be  no  realities  which  are  not  some- 
how essentially  related  to  that  section  of  experience  which  is 
called  mind.  In  this  sense,  to  be  sure,  everything  is  subjec- 
tive. But  the  experience-type  does  not  deem  this  statement 


94  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

any  more  fundamental  than  its  converse,  that  minds  are 
essentially  related  to  their  objects;  it  would  be  as  true  to 
call  it  an  objective  as  a  subjective  type.  In  point  of  fact 
neither  appellation  is  true,  for  it  regards  each  of  our  first  two 
systems  as  one-sided  and  therefore  false.  Since  all  things  are 
interrelated,  any  part  or  element  is  as  such  unreal;  an 
abstraction  from  the  continuous  mass,  not  more  actual  than 
is  the  exact  cubic  foot  of  water  in  the  rushing  stream. 
Neither  alternative  then  is  correct;  the  present  view,  in- 
stead of  combining  both,  tends  to  look  exclusively  at  their 
mutual  rebuttals  and  therefore  cuts  under  both.  Reality 
is  not  so  much  an  amalgam  of  subject  and  object,  preserving 
both,  as  a  tertium  quid,  a  matrix  out  of  which  either  may  be 
carved.  And  the  matrix  is  neither  one  nor  the  other,  but 
"nurein  drittes"  (Avenarius,  Der  Menschliche  Weltbegriff, 
p.  2).  Or  we  may  say  that  subject  and  object  are  knots  in 
the  tree  of  reality,  not  separable,  not  independent,  not  ulti- 
mate:—  who  can  take  the  knot  out  of  the  living  tree? 
(Cf.  Avenarius,  op.  cit.,  p.  65,  fine  print;  also  p.  79,  and 
p.  84. 

The  type  is  then  emphatically  monistic;  a  pantheism 
wherein  God  is  replaced  by  Experience.  The  monism  is  con- 
sciously adopted  as  a  preventive  of  the  Cartesian  dualism 
and  its  attendant  difficulties.  (Cf.  Ward's  Naturalism  and 
Agnosticism,  ist  ed.,  vol.  II,  part  IV,  lect.  14.)  Its  motive 
is  thus  an  exclusive  one.  It  does  not  allow  the  bifurcation  of 
experience  into  object  and  subject  to  develop  freely,  and 
then  find  a  means  of  synthesizing  them.  It  precludes  the 
bifurcation.  Resembling  absolute  idealism  in  its  organic 
conception  of  reality,  it  differs  therefrom  in  not  accepting 
this  particular  differentiation  or  including  its  two  products. 
Hereby  it  tends  to  look  like  a  blank,  colourless  affair,  a 
negation,  a  worship  of  some  mystical  entity.  But  let  us  see. 


THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE  95 

Perhaps  the  initial  difficulty  of  comprehending  the  position 
lies  in  our  inveterate  tendency  to  interpret  the  word  "  expe- 
rience "  straightway  into  either  "  somebody's  mental  state  " 
or  "  objects,"  physical  or  conceptual.  Such  meaning  is 
however  read  in,  not  actually  present  in  the  facts.  The 
interpreter  is  like  a  real  estate  agent  who  looks  upon  a  piece 
of  land  as  of  so  much  financial  value  and  cannot  naively  see 
it  as  just  land.  One  of  the  defenders  of  the  experience- 
philosophy  thus  meets  the  difficulty.  "  First  of  all,  it  will 
be  asked:  'If  experience  has  not  conscious  existence,  if  it 
be  not  partly  made  of  "  consciousness,"  of  what  then  is  it 
made  ?  Matter  we  know,  and  thought  we  know,  but  neutral 
and  simple  "pure  experience"  is  something  we  know  not  at 
all.  Say  what  it  consists  of,  for  it  must  consist  of  something 
—  or  be  willing  to  give  it  up ! ' 

"  To  this  challenge  the  reply  is  easy.  Although  for 
fluency's  sake  I  myself  spoke  early  in  this  article  of  a  stuff 
of  pure  experience,  I  have  now  to  say  that  there  is  no  general 
stuff  of  which  experience  at  large  is  made.  There  are  as 
many  stuffs  as  there  are  '  natures  '  in  the  things  experienced. 
If  you  ask  what  any  one  bit  of  pure  experience  is  made  of, 
the  answer  is  always  the  same :  '  it  is  made  of  that,  of  just 
what  appears,  of  space,  of  intensity,  of  flatness,  brownness, 
heaviness,  or  what  not.'  Shadworth  Hodgson's  analysis 
here  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired.  Experience  is  only  a  col- 
lective name  for  all  these  sensible  natures,  and  save  for  time 
and  space  (and,  if  you  like,  for  '  being ')  there  appears  no 
universal  element  of  which  all  things  are  made."  (James, 
Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,  pp.  26-27.) 

As  described  by  the  above  extract,  the  philosophy  of  ex- 
perience seems  to  mean  two  things,  a  negative  and  a  posi- 
tive. The  positive  part  consists  of  the  inculcation  of 
empiricism.  To  find  out  what  reality  is,  consult  it;  and 


96  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

describe  it  as  it  offers  itself  in  experience.  This  is  that  part 
of  the  doctrine  which  is  contributed  by  the  second  word  of 
its  title.  On  this  side,  the  doctrine  is  fitly  named  Radical 
Empiricism ;  it  is  not  directed  primarily  against  objectivism 
or  subjectivism,  but  is  a  general  plan  or  method  of  phi- 
losophizing. Such  a  plan,  chronologically  associated  with 
the  remainder  of  the  present  type,  is  from  a  logical,  analyti- 
cal point  of  view  quite  distinct  therefrom.  The  negative 
side,  which  bears  upon  the  problems  raised  by  our  first  two 
types,  is  alone  here  pertinent.  Consequently  we  dismiss  the 
radical-empiricism  motive  for  the  present,  promising  to  take 
it  up  in  a  later  chapter  (Ch.  VIII).  Our  sole  concern  now  is 
with  the  first  word  of  the  title;  the  meaning  of  "  pure." 

As  to  that,  the  case  seems  clear.  "  Inner  "  experience  is 
a  fiction.  The  hypothesis  of  "  introjection,"  which  believes 
in  the  inner  feeling  as  over  against  the  outer  world,  is  a 
fallacious  addition  of  philosophers.  Not  both  inner  and 
outer,  but  neither  —  that  is  the  supposition  we  are  to  make, 
which  will  purge  away  the  corruptions  of  philosophy.  "  The 
term  '  introjection  '  we  owe  to  a  brilliant  thinker  but  re- 
cently taken  from  us,  the  late  Richard  Avenarius  of  Zurich. 
The  hypothesis  to  which  it  refers  is  familiar  enough  and  as 
old  apparently  as  human  speech;  it  is  substantially  what 
Professor  Tylor  has  called  animism.  But  to  Avenarius  be- 
longs the  merit  of  making  the  epistemological  bearings  of 
the  primitive  doctrine  clearer  than  they  were  before.  The 
essence  of  introjection  consists  in  applying  to  the  immediate 
experience  of  my  fellow  creatures  conceptions  which  have 
no  counterpart  in  my  own.  I  find  myself  in  direct  relation 
with  my  environment  and  only  what  I  find  for  myself  can  I 
logically  assume  for  another.  But  of  another,  common 
thought  and  language  lead  me  to  assume  not  merely  that 
his  experience  is  distinct  from  mine,  but  that  it  is  in  him  in 


THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE  97 

the  form  of  sensations,  perceptions,  and  other  '  internal 
states.'  Of  the  seen  in  my  environment  I  say  there  is  a  per- 
ception in  him.  Thus  while  my  environment  is  an  external 
world  for  me,  his  experience  is  for  me  an  internal  world  in 
him.  This  is  introjection.  And  since  I  am  led  to  apply  this 
conception  to  all  my  fellow  creatures  and  it  is  applied  by  all 
my  fellow  men  to  me,  I  naturally  apply  it  also  to  myself. 
Thus  it  comes  about  that  instead  of  construing  others' 
experience  exactly  and  precisely  on  lines  of  our  own  —  the 
duality  of  subject  and  object  —  we  are  induced  to  miscon- 
strue our  own  experience  on  the  lines  of  a  false  but  highly 
plausible  assumption  as  to  others'  experience,  which  actually 
contradicts  our  own.  To  this  contradiction,  latent  in  com- 
mon thought  and  language,  we  may  fairly  attribute  the 
impasse  to  which  the  problem  of  external  perception  has 
been  reduced."  (J.  Ward,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  ist 
ed.,  vol.  II,  p.  172). 

As  this  passage  illustrates,  the  type  in  question  directs 
most  of  its  effort  against  subjectivism ;  but  that  is  probably 
due  to  the  conditions  of  the  present  day.  Any  external 
object  unexperienced  and  in  no  way  connected  with  expe- 
rience would  doubtless  be  denied  as  sternly  as  the  shut-in 
feeling  of  our  fellow  men.  For  if  this  were  not  so,  there 
would  be  no  justice  in  their  use  of  the  word  "  experience  " 
rather  than  the  word  "  object  "  or  "  thing  "  or  "  reality." 
And  we  have  now  to  see  that  this  exclusion  of  introjection 
does  not  in  the  least  solve  the  epistemological  puzzle,  nor 
even  provide  a  guiding  thread  for  the  discovery  of  a  solu- 
tion of  that  or  any  other  philosophical  problem.  It  does  not 
succeed  in  abolishing  the  dualism  of  inner  vs.  outer,  and  has 
no  more  fertility  than  subjectivism  or  objectivism  had. 
Like  them  it  has  its  critical  point,  viz.,  the  duality:  like 
them  it  is  perfectly  true  and  unfruitful. 


98  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

As  regards  the  "  fallacy  of  introjection,"  it  is  easy  to  see 
that  however  neutrally  we  define  "  feeling  "  or  "  idea  "  or 
other  alleged  mental  state,  it  remains  distinct  in  kind  from 
x  an  apple,  or  a  stick,  or  other  object.  Experience  itself  leads 
us  to  distinguish  objects  into  two  classes.  When  James  says 
that  consciousness  is  but  "  a  kind  of  external  relation  (be- 
tween objects)  and  does  not  denote  a  special  stuff  or  way  of 
being  "  (ibid.,  p.  25),  he  admits  the  duality.  The  "  external 
relation  "  is  unique,  and  cannot  be  reduced  to  the  objects. 
They  are  not  this  relation;  the  two  are  forever  distinct;  of 
what  use  to  call  the  distinction  one  of  relation  rather  than 
one  of  stuff  ?  It  leads  only  to  a  rephrasing  of  all  the  episte- 
mological  queries.  The  "  soul  "  of  animism,  the  "  inner 
state  "  of  introjection,  are  no  more  different  from  bodies 
than  the  "  external  relation  "  of  the  empiricist.  Here  is  the 
same  oversight  that  attended  subjectivism,  when  it  thought 
to  reduce  all  matter  to  spirit.  The  puzzle  remains,  how  this 
sort  of  external  relation  can  do  the  things  which  conscious- 
ness does,  and  suffer  the  incursions  of  physical  forces  —  in 
short,  the  old  problems  of  interaction  and  parallelism  come 
up  once  more.  Monism  cannot  wipe  out  dualism;  it  can  do 
no  more  than  provide  a  comprehensive  rubric.  Did  Spi- 
noza answer  the  puzzles  about  body  and  mind  by  calling 
them  two  aspects  of  one  substance  ?  Have  Avenarius, 
Ward,  James,  et  al.,  accounted  for  the  differentiation  by 
saying  that  the  species  belong  to  one  genus  ? 

"  Pure  experience  "  if  it  is  to  have  philosophic  value,  must 
either  explain  how  the  primitive  reality  gets  split  up  into 
two  sorts,  or  must  show  that  there  are  not  really  two  sorts. 
It  does,  and  can  do,  neither  of  these.  It  can  only  say  "  don't 
ask  and  you  won't  get  into  trouble."  Sometimes  indeed  it 
appears  to  be  trying  to  justify  this  negative  attitude.  "  Let 
the  reader  arrest  himself  in  the  act  of  reading  this  article 


THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE  99 

now.  Now  this  is  a  pure  experience,  or  datum,  a  mere  that 
or  content  of  fact.  '  Reading  '  simply  is,  is  there;  and 
whether  there  for  some  one's  consciousness,  or  there  for 
physical  nature,  is  a  question  not  yet  put.  At  the  moment 
it  is  there  for  neither  ..."  (James,  Essays  in  Radical  Em- 
piricism, pp.  145-146).  If  this  is  meant  to  defend  the 
monism  of  "  pure  experience "  against  the  dualism  of 
subject-object,  is  it  not  the  old  mistake,  committed  in  such 
slogans  as  "  back  to  nature  "  or  "  the  simple  life  "  ?  Of 
all  men,  philosophers  ought  to  know  better,  for  none  have 
tried  so  often  to  return  to  naivete,  and  have  so  often  re- 
traced the  same  weary  round.  More  honest,  it  seems,  is 
either  subjectivism  or  objectivism,  with  its  frank  accept- 
ance of  a  difficult  task. 

As  to  the  fertility,  it  is  no  more  suggestive  of  the  outlines 
of  reality  to  call  it  pure  experience,  than  to  call  it  mental  or 
external.  Not  merely  this,  moreover;  it  works  positively 
against  the  search  for  such  an  outline.  For  "  experience  " 
is  a  concept  in  unstable  equilibrium.  It  tries  to  avoid  the 
tilt  by  balancing  in  the  centre;  but  its  point  is  too  minute. 
It  inevitably  falls  over  to  one  side  or  the  other;  it  is  inter- 
preted in  an  objective  or  subjective  sense  —  as  the  recent 
discussions  show.  Professor  Ward  tends  to  the  idealistic 
side,  James  and  Dewey  on  the  whole  to  the  realistic.  The 
controversy  between  subjectivism  and  objectivism  will  then 
break  out  anew.  It  is  the  ancient  moral  lesson:  if  you 
abstain  from  doing  evil  by  mere  inaction,  your  last  state 
will  be  worse  than  your  first.  Historically  the  inefficacy  of 
the  doctrine  is  rather  obvious.  So  far  as  we  know,  no  advo- 
cate of  this  type  (excepting  the  theist,  Professor  Ward)  has 
gone  beyond  it  to  map  out  the  universe,  to  indicate  the 
specific  structure  of  the  real  world.  The  irony  of  life  is  evi- 
dent here;  the  philosophy  which  talks  loudest  of  experience 


100  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

and  empiricism,  has  presented  to  us  the  abstractest  and 
vaguest  of  all  terms;  most  devoted  to  experience,  it  has 
learned  less  from  experience  than  either  subjectivism  or 
objectivism.  For  experience  is  specific,  and  the  philosophy 
of  experience,  so  far  as  it  keeps  its  purity,  gives  no  specific 
information  about  the  universe. 

Its  critical  point,  consequently,  is  sooner  reached  than 
that  of  the  first  two  types.  Subjectivism's  formula  applied 
categorically  to  a  large  portion  of  reality,  and  hypothetically 
to  the  remainder;  and  its  meaning,  though  limited,  was 
definite.  Objectivism's  principle  applied  everywhere;  but 
it  was  impotent  to  account  for  the  contact  of  subject  and 
object  in  knowledge.  If  less  precise  than  the  first  type  — 
because  it  reduced  the  world  to  no  one  particular  kind  of 
being  —  it  was  at  least  more  precise  than  our  third  type 
with  its  lack  of  any  particular  formula.  There  can  be  no 
term  more  limitless  in  scope  than  "  experience  ";  there  can 
be  no  term  less  suggestive  of  the  characters  of  reality.  The 
critical  point  of  the  experience-philosophy  is  the  concretions, 
subject  and  object.  It  is,  no  doubt,  a  wiser  philosophy  than 
the  other  two,  for  it  has  learned  to  stand  outside  the  combat 
and  see  more  broadly;  but  its  wisdom  is  only  that  of  dis- 
illusionment, since  it  does  not  lead  to  any  positive  con- 
clusion. Abjuring  epistemology,  it  is  itself  concerned  with 
nothing  else.  And,  with  its  rigorous  diet  of  pure  experience, 
it  has  reduced  philosophy  to  the  skinniest  possible  outline. 

Need  we  point  out  that  this  extreme  of  unproductiveness 
is  due  to  the  same  faults  which  ruined  the  other  two  types  ? 
The  experience-system  is,  in  spite  of  good  resolutions  toward 
empiricism,  actually  more  exclusive  than  either  of  them. 
For  fear  of  insoluble  puzzles,  it  will  not  admit  either  subject 
or  object  to  ultimate  reality.  And  in  order  to  escape  the 
one-sidedness  of  these  two,  it  adopts  a  watchword  so  exhaus- 


THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE  IOI 

* 

tive  as  to  have  lost  clear  meaning,  and  with  it  the  power  of 
imparting  information.  We  have  nowhere  said  that  the 
experience- view  utters  a  lie.  There  is  perhaps  not  a  word  of 
untruth  in  all  its  writings,  except  where  it  denies  its  rivals. 
But  it  is  the  very  certainty  of  its  message  that  renders  it 
futile;  for  its  pronouncement  that  all  is  experience  is  irrel- 
evant to  any  description  whatsoever  of  the  constitution  of 
that  experience.  Be  it  understood,  however,  that  we  are 
here  appraising  the  type  as  regards  its  contribution  to 
the  solution  of  our  first  issue;  as  an  empirical  attitude 
toward  reality  in  general  we  shall  consider  it  in  Chapter 
VIII. 

At  this  point  we  must  meet  an  accusation  which  we  have 
perhaps  put  off  too  long;  a  formal  one,  we  think,  but  a 
favourite  with  workers  upon  these  topics.  What  we  have 
written  concerning  "  pure  experience  "  will  presumably 
arouse  the  criticism,  that  we  have  not  defined  our  terms  with 
sufficient  care.  Of  our  treatment  of  subjectivism,  indeed, 
and  of  objectivism  as  well,  the  same  indictment  is  only  too 
easy.  We  have  deferred  it  until  now,  because  it  is  so  much 
more  obvious  with  that  term  of  infinite  connotation  "  expe- 
rience." One  who  agrees  with  the  views  here  defended  —  if 
there  be  one  —  is  contented,  and  will  not  wish  to  burrow 
into  niceties  of  meaning;  but  to  a  hostile  critic  in  the  field 
of  philosophy  the  objection  always  lies  at  hand,  that  a 
deeper  analysis  of  the  terms  used  would  reverse  the  deci- 
sion. This  is  peculiarly  the  case  in  that  territory,  because 
the  object-matter  is  not  a  hard  material  thing  that  stays 
for  confirmation  of  one's  testimony:  reexamination  will 
almost  always  add  something  new,  or  push  the  old  into  the 
background  of  attention.  And  consequently  the  objection 
is  sound  enough  as  far  as  it  goes.  It  is  likely  that  no  one  has 
examined  any  philosophical  concept  with  adequate  rigour; 


102  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

that  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the  reasons  mentioned  in  Chapter  II 
for  the  disagreements  of  investigators.    Yet  it  is  often  need- 
less to  carry  analysis  beyond  a  certain  point;  for  we  believe 
what  we  seem  clearly  to  see.    That  2  +  3  =  5  we  do  not 
doubt;  but  no  one  probably  has  traced  all  the  foundations 
of  this  truth,  and  it  is  precisely  when  the  mathematicians 
begin  to  do  so  that  the  hue  of  uncertainty  and  disagreement 
first  appears  on  their  clear-cut  horizon.    So  simple  a  truth  — 
simple  because  abstract  —  is  its  own  guarantee;   and  the 
most  we  can  hope  for,  in  the  philosophical  field,  is  to  ap- 
proach the  directness  and  simplicity  of  elementary  arith- 
metic.   So  it  is  with  subjectivism,  objectivism,  "  experience  " 
and  all  other  types  yet  to  be  examined.    We  give  as  much 
elucidation  of  their  concepts  as  seems  sufficient  to  our  pur- 
pose of  understanding  their  main  drift.    Many  refinements 
might  be  added;   some  of  them,  no  doubt,  suggestive  and 
fundamental,  and  they  would  lend  a  certain  weight  to  our 
argument.    But  when  we  seem  to  ourselves  to  see  certain 
truths  about  these  types  so  clearly  that  no  refinements, 
within  a  reasonable  doubt,  would  refute  them  —  even  as  no 
analysis  is  likely  to  give  the  lie  to  my  vision  of  this  paper 
or  addition  of  2  and  3  —  then  we  cannot  but  forego  the  im- 
pressiveness  of  the  splitting-up  process,  and  exhibit  those 
truths.    Of  course  this  does  not  mean  that  we  should  never 
pursue  analysis  further  than  is  convenient.   On  the  contrary, 
we  should  do  so  as  much  as  possible.    But  we  cannot  refuse, 
of  course,  to  believe  at  all,  because  mistakes  may  later  be 
detected.    It  is  very  good  to  wish  to  "  get  down  to  funda- 
mentals," but  that  desire  should  not  lead  us  to  deny  the 
verities  we  feel  compelled  to  accept.    One  must  draw  the 
line  somewhere  in  the  process  of  analysis;    and  we  have 
drawn  it  where  it  seemed  to  us  reasonable,  knowing  that 
indisputable  proof  is  practically  impossible. 


THE  SOLVENT:  PURE  EXPERIENCE  103 

But  to  return:  many  thinkers  have  felt  the  barrenness  of 
the  subjective-objective  issue,  and  have  judged  the  solution 
offered  by  this  third  type  to  be  negative.  To  such  the  other 
alternative  we  mentioned  above  is  all  that  remains.  They 
must  choose  a  more  synthetic  way;  a  doctrine  which  in- 
cludes both  sides.  At  the  same  time,  the  spirit  of  partisan- 
ship, dissatisfied  with  the  negative  result  of  the  impartial 
experience-theory,  is  likely  to  revive.  Let  them  then 
espouse  a  philosophy  which  will  combine  the  truths  of  sub- 
jectivism and  its  rival,  yet  will  define  one  of  these  in  a  more 
fertile  way,  so  as  to  give  it  a  more  fundamental  part  than  the 
other.  Which  one  ?  we  may  ask.  There  is  likely  to  occur, 
historically,  a  choice  first  of  one  and  then  of  the  other;  viz., 
first  a  philosophy  which  enlarges  its  conception  of  the  sub- 
ject to  include  the  elements  claimed  by  objectivism,  and 
second,  one  which  does  the  same  for  the  object.  We  shall 
follow  this  order;  for  reasons  expounded  in  the  "  histories 
of  philosophy  "  events  did  hi  fact  so  transpire. 

The  subjectively  weighted  combination  would  naturally 
proceed  as  follows : 

(i)  A  genuine  distinction  must  be  evolved  out  of  subjec- 
tivism whereby  to  differentiate  the  real  from  the  illusory; 
that  is,  the  self  of  that  view  must  be  enlarged.  It  will  con- 
sequently not  be  the  private  self  of  some  particular  mind, 
but  a  Great  or  Universal  Self.  The  real  object  will  here  be 
the  presentation  to  the  Great  Mind;  the  illusory,  the  pre- 
sentation merely  to  the  private  mind.  Thus  the  enlarg- 
ment  or  fertilization  of  subjectivism  by  objectivism  leads  to 
a  new  concept.  And  in  this  type,  the  object  must,  as  we 
just  said,  be  really  included,  in  order  to  prevent  the  endless 
seesaw.  This  means  that  the  characters  of  objects  must 
really  be  accounted  for,  deduced  out  of  the  necessary  attri- 
butes of  the  Great  Self.  That  is,  the  principal  categories  of 


104  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

the  objective  world  must  be  derived  by  immanent  logic 
from  the  concept  of  that  Self. 

(2)  The  dualism  of  objective  realism  is  thus  retained ;  the 
difference  between  object  and  subject  is  permitted  along- 
side the  sameness,  in  that  it  is  grounded  in  the  difference 
between  the  private  self  and  the  Great  Self.     Whereas 
objectivism's  critical  point  was  the  cognitive  relation,  this 
new  type  demies  that  relation  by  sameness  between  the  con- 
tents of  this  Great  Mind  and  the  object. 

(3)  The  positive  doctrine  of  "  pure  experience  "  is  also 
retained,  inasmuch  as  it  is  alleged  that  there  is  nothing  in 
the  whole  universe  which  is  not  object  of  sentience  —  i.  e., 
some  function  of  experience.    But  as  the  term  "  experience  " 
has  been  already  seen  to  be  one  of  the  vaguest  in  the  phil- 
osophical vocabulary,  there  is  little  importance  in  this  third 
trait.    By  virtue  of  its  logical  inheritance,  we  may  fitly  call 
this  view  Great  Subjectivism ;  it  is  today  usually  known  as 
idealism.    It  forms  a  much  more  complicated  and  interesting 
type  than  any  of  the  above  three,  and  must  be  examined  in  a 
separate  chapter. 


CHAPTER  VI 

GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM 

THE  type  here  presented  is  usually  called  idealism :  we 
have  already  stated  why  the  heading  of  this  chapter 
seems  an  apter  title.  But  there  are  other  reasons  also. 
"  Idealism  "  has  been  applied  to  many  kinds  of  system, 
differing  as  fundamentally  as  Plato's,  Berkeley's,  Kant's, 
Herbart's,  and  Hegel's.  We  are  to  set  forth  a  doctrine  which 
approximates  the  Kantian  and  post-Kantian  ones,  before 
Hegel;  a  doctrine  whose  unique  and  unmistakable  influence 
upon  thought,  and  whose  intrinsic  beauty,  render  it  deserv- 
ing of  a  distinguishing  name.  Since  it  differs  down  to  its 
very  roots  —  in  spite  of  surface  resemblances  —  from  the 
objective  rationalism  of  Plato,  the  subjectivism  of  Berkeley, 
the  psychological  realism  of  Herbart,  and  the  absolutism  of 
Hegel,  it  is  hardly  just  to  use  an  official  designation  whose 
connotations  are  shared  by  all  of  these.  Occasionally,  how- 
ever, for  brevity,  we  may  be  permitted  to  retain  the  older 
usage. 

In  a  sense  this  type  is  subjective,  but  so  transformed  and 
augmented  as  to  be  upon  a  level  of  its  own.  It  would  re- 
form the  procedure  of  philosophy  by  denying  reality  to 
objects  independent  of  mind;  it  alleges  that  reality,  con- 
sidered as  something  complete  by  itself  and  apart  from  a 
mind  that  knows  it,  is  full  of  insoluble  puzzles  and  contra- 
dictions, but  that  these  disappear  when  reality  is  treated  as 
not  something  by  itself,  but  solely  for  mind.  So  far  it  goes 
with  subjectivism ;  but  it  has  learned  the  lesson  read  to  that 


106  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

view  by  objectivism,  and  has  forged  a  new  weapon  unknown 
to  the  subjectivist.  If  the  latter  could  not  pass  beyond  the 
line  between  present  data  and  unknown  objects,  without  the 
help  of  the  crutch  potentiality,  idealism  has  longer  and 
stronger  legs.  It  needs  no  such  adventitious  concept  as 
"  permanent  possibility  ";  it  walks  about  naturally  among 
the  remotest  actualities.  For  it  uses  mind  to  mean  not  only 
the  private  self  but  the  Great  Self  or  Subject;  a  Universal 
Mind  to  whom  all  things  are  present,  and  whose  content 
they  are.  External  real  objects,  while  beyond  the  private 
consciousness,  yours  or  mine,  are  the  content  of  that  uni- 
versal one.  To  be  content  of  that  mind  is  indeed  to  be  real; 
to  be  content  of  a  private  mind  alone,  is  to  be  only  idea. 
Idealism  is  therefore  truly  a  synthesis  of  the  first  two  types. 
It  keeps  the  mind  of  subjectivism  and  provides  for  the  ex- 
ternal reality  of  objectivism  by  the  adjective  "  universal." 
The  hostility  of  the  two  is  overcome  by  peaceful  wedlock; 
but  the  subjectivist  factor  is  the  male,  for  it  is  his  name  that 
is  legally  adopted,  and  he  bears,  as  a  rule,  the  brunt  of  the 
attacks.  Great  subjectivism  escapes  the  danger  of  one- 
sidedness  to  which  subjectivism  seemed  liable,  since  it  can- 
not be  accused  of  solipsism,  or  of  denying  dualistic  realism; 
and  idealists  are  fond  of  refuting  solipsism  as  well  as  mere 
subjectivism.  Herein,  to  be  sure,  they  are  wrong,  for  we 
have  seen  neither  view  to  be  erroneous;  yet  idealism  is  no 
doubt  a  more  adequate  view  than  either  of  them.  Whereas 
subjectivism  seemed  to  deny  its  counterpart,  objectivism, 
idealism  does  not  even  seem  to  do  so.  It  rather  guarantees 
its  truth.  From  the  attribute  of  universality  which  it 
bestows  upon  mind,  idealism  deduces  the  concept  of  the  ex- 
ternal object.  Thus  it  passes  uninjured  that  point  where 
subjectivism  was  maimed,  and  had  to  resort  to  a  crutch. 
Idealism  may  be  likened  to  the  chemical  formula  of  a  sub- 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  107 

stance,  which  explains  the  substance's  properties,  even  when 
it  has  passed  its  critical  point.  More  than  this,  however, 
idealism  deduces  the  principal  relations  which  objects  bear 
to  one  another,  i.  e.,  the  categories.  In  short,  it  claims  to 
be  a.  fertile  view.  It  furnishes,  as  neither  subjectivism  nor 
objectivism  did,  a  conception  which  accounts  for  something 
of  the  character  of  the  world;  space,  time,  causation,  num- 
ber, quantity,  etc.  In  this  it  is  altogether  upon  a  higher 
plane.  It  is  no  longer  merely  formal,  like  those  simpler 
types.  If  they  are  one-dimensional,  with  their  simple  linear 
attributes  of  the  subjective  or  the  objective,  idealism  is  two- 
dimensional,  with  its  double  characterization  of  mentality 
and  universality.  And  being  two-dimensional  it  makes 
possible  a  plan  or  map  of  the  world,  a  philosophic  system 
with  some  wealth  of  content;  which  neither  subjectivism 
nor  dualistic  realism  were  able  of  themselves  to  furnish. 
In  fact  this  productiveness  is  the  keynote  of  idealism,  its 
test  and  proof.  It  is  precisely  upon  its  ability  to  account  for 
objects  and  their  chief  relations,  that  idealism  bases  its 
claim  of  truth.  Such  was  the  spirit  of  Kant's  Transcenden- 
tal Deduction;  such  is  the  soul  of  the  deductions  of  cate- 
gories presented  today  by  the  idealists  Natorp,Miinsterberg, 
Royce,  Baldwin,  and  others.  And  in  examining  the  creden- 
tials of  this  system,  consequently,  it  is  upon  this  aspect  that 
we  must  fix  our  attention. 

The  same  peculiarity  of  idealism  stands  out  when  we  com- 
pare it  with  another  and  allied  system,  that  of  absolutism 
(often  called  absolute  idealism).  This  latter  view,  of  which 
the  Hegelian  and  certain  recent  English  systems  are  ex- 
amples, certainly  agrees  with  idealism  as  regards  the  su- 
premacy of  mind;  but  not  only  does  it  reach  that  mind  by 
a  different  route,  but  also  the  function  of  mind  differs  widely 
in  the  two  systems.  For  absolutism,  mind  is  the  single 


108  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

all-inclusive  whole;  for  idealism,  mind  is  not  the  whole  so 
much  as  the  head  of  the  universe.  It  is  one  factor  among 
others,  dominating  the  rest,  ordering  and  arranging  it, 
creating  out  of  it  a  cosmos;  but  it  is  not  the  whole  which 
shines  through  and  is  identically  each  and  every  part.  The 
absolutist  has  his  Universal  Mind,  but  he  does  not  generate 
out  of  it  the  special  characters  and  relations  that  appear  in 
the  world.  And  that  is  just  what  the  idealist  does.  For 
him  the  universal  is  an  asymmetrical  affair:  the  centre  of 
gravity  lies  on  one  side  of  it,  the  side  of  mind.  For  the 
absolutist  the  whole  is  symmetrical.  No  one  aspect  or  part 
is  intrinsically  more  significant  than  any  other;  it  becomes 
so  only  by  being  more  inclusive.  Degree  of  reality  is  degree 
of  approximation  to  the  whole.  Idealism  is  subjectivism 
with  the  subject  no  longer  a  passive  recipient  or  container, 
but  transformed  into  an  active  orderer,  a  creator  of  laws  and 
forms,  by  its  own  inherent  productiveness.  That  is  why  for 
the  idealist  the  categories  are  developed  out  of  the  activity 
of  the  Universal  Mind,  for  absolutism — as  with  Hegel — out 
of  one  another  in  ever  increasing  breadth  until  the  whole  is 
attained.  Thus  idealism,  though  a  synthesis  of  subjectivism 
and  objectivism,  remains  only  a  partial  synthesis,  for  its 
material,  the  content  of  its  mind,  is  still  other  than  that 
mind  itself:  something  which  it  works  upon;  while  ab- 
solutism is  a  complete  synthesis,  identifying  mind  with  the 
unity  of  content  and  form.  The  correctness  of  our  descrip- 
tion may  be  seen  by  comparison  of  recent  idealistic  systems 
(those  of  Cohen,  Natorp,  Cassirer,  Rickert,  Windelband, 
Miinsterberg,  Royce*)  with  the  absolutism  of  Bosanquet 
and  Bradley.  For  the  former  group  would  —  with  the  pos- 
sible exception  of  Royce  —  refuse  to  accept  the  system  of  the 

*  In  his  later  volumes,  The  World  and  the  Individual,  and  Encyclopaedia 
of  Philosophical  Sciences,  vol.  I,  pp.  67-135. 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  1 09 

latter  pair;  and  conversely.    And  accordingly  we  shall  have 
to  treat  absolute  idealism  as  a  different  type. 

Some  of  our  deepest  emotions  and  practical  needs  lead  to 
idealism.  Strongest,  perhaps,  is  what  we  might  call  the  wor- 
ship of  personality.  A  person,  even  a  shallow  or  debased  one, 
is  doubtless  a  marvellous  affair.  It  is  conscious,  and  creates; 
it  shows  its  superiority  over  Nature  by  dominating  it  in 
some  small  degree ;  and  to  man  the  person  must  always  be 
the  most  interesting  object  of  his  environment.  For  the  ide- 
alist Kant  a  person  is  always  to  be  treated  as  an  end,  never 
as  a  means.  So  wonderful  an  entity,  we  feel,  must  possess  a 
metaphysical  rank  appropriate  to  its  worth  and  interest. 
The  overwhelming  conviction  of  value  thus  urges  us  toward 
idealistic  theory.  For  the  more  scientifically  minded  this 
admiration  of  personality  counts  less;  hence  we  find  that 
the  realism  of  our  own  day  appeals  to  scientific  standards. 
Yet  so  strong  is  the  modern  personality-motive,  that  even 
the  realistic  foes  of  idealism  study  exclusively  the  problems  of 
mind,  consciousness,  or  knowledge.  Though  they  repudiate 
idealism,  they  are  not  free  of  its  influence;  the  tenacious 
grip  of  that  doctrine  is  but  slightly  loosened  by  the  intel- 
lectual refutations.  But  why  does  not  this  personal  motive 
lead  to  subjectivism  rathdr  than  to  idealism  ?  Because  of 
another  note  that  is  peculiarly  modern;  the  social  one.  The 
single  person  is  no  longer  conceived  as  a  complete  individual. 
Isolation,  anti-social  behaviour,  these  we  detest  today  above 
all  things;  the  person  is  now  wholly  a  socius.  The  great 
movement  toward  democracy  drives  in  this  direction.  The 
person  is  thus  enlarged,  and  its  enlargement  cannot  stop 
with  the  commonwealth,  the  nation,  the  race,  the  whole  of 
humanity.  It  becomes  the  Universal  Person.  Such  a  con- 
cept is  the  cumulation  of  two  of  the  strongest  motives  in 
modern  life. 


110  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Upon  art  and  religion  also  the  idealistic  attitude  leans. 
It  is  the  essence  of  art  to  be  creative;  the  artist  —  according 
to  the  usual  view  —  makes  more  than  Nature  can  make; 
he  does  not  copy  Nature,  but  creates  a  new  entity  out  of  the 
materials  which  Nature  provides.  He  gives  to  Nature  its 
values;  indeed  value  and  worth  are  so  bound  up  with  per- 
sonality that  idealism  and  value-philosophy  tend  to  coalesce. 
Whosoever  esteems  fundamentally  the  artist's  point  of  view 
will  then  be  inclined  to  idealism.  Indeed,  idealism  is  the 
artist's  philosophy  par  excellence;  for  idealism's  greatest 
apparent  triumph  is  that  which  it  wins  over  its  arch-enemy, 
realistic  science,  when  it  shows  that  the  body  of  science's 
laws  is  itself  a  work  of  art,  a  chef  d'ceuvre  in  which  thousands 
of  collaborators  participate.  For  science  is  to  this  attitude 
not  a  passive  contemplation  of  facts  as  they  are,  but  a  pro- 
ductive ordering  of  brute  data  in  a  rational  system  of  laws, 
where  the  laws  are  the  creatures  of  the  mind.  The  disci- 
pline in  which  mind  appears  most  subservient  to  nature  is 
the  one  in  which  its  mastery  is  most  triumphant;  fact  be- 
comes artifact.  This  aspect  of  idealism  appeals  to  the 
romantic  side  of  human  nature;  it  is  a  form  of  the  Wille  zur 
Macht;  it  is  an  impassioned  view,  an  agressive  view.  Its 
home  is  in  the  temper  of  modern  Germany  and,  in  part,  of  the 
United  States  of  America;  no  idealistic  systems  have  arisen 
from  the  less  romantic  English,  or  more  impersonally  logical 
French  temperament.  Both  art  and  artisanship  unite  in  the 
motive  of  creative  efficiency  which  is  the  essence  of  Kultur. 

To  the  religious  it  appears  a  quick  and  easy  step  into 
idealism.  For  if  God  is  spirit  and  if  God  is  supreme,  then 
the  Universal  creative  Mind  is  straightway  established.  To 
such  a  view  any  form  of  hostile  realism  seems  antitheistic; 
it  limits  the  power  of  God,  it  places  something  outside  him 
to  which  he  must  perforce  acquiesce.  Yet  it  is  not  the 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  1 1 1 

pantheistic  God  which  idealism  worships.  Its  chord  com- 
bines the  three  tones  of  personality,  art,  and  religion;  and 
of  these  the  dominant  is  personality.  Its  God  will  then  be  a 
personal  God  and  a  poet  or  maker.  The  real  objects,  the 
brute  matter  of  the  world,  are  just  and  only  the  material 
which  he  orders;  the  Anstoss  of  his  creative  power.  For 
absolutism,  which  is  pantheistic,  real  objects  are  constitutive 
of  God;  for  idealism  they  are  other  than  but  wholly  subject 
to  God.  And  as  religion — organized,  proselyting  religion — 
has  always  rejected  pantheism,  so  it  rejects  absolutism  and 
fosters  idealism.  To  be  sure,  there  are  realistic  motives  in 
religion,  as  we  have  already  seen,  and  shall  again  see  in 
Chapter  X;  but  enough  that  there  are  idealistic  ones  too. 
Now  there  appears  to  be  no  reasonable  ground  for  doubting 
that  all  these  motives  unite  to  give  an  overpowering  per- 
suasiveness to  idealism.  The  system  may  or  may  not  be 
true;  its  value  may  or  may  not  constitute  its  truth;  but 
were  it  not  for  its  significance  —  to  which,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
opponents  are  often  congenitally  blind  —  it  seems  clear 
that  it  would  not  be  so  persistently  proffered  as  the  only 
rational  account  of  things.  As  culture  is  better  than  bar- 
barism, the  arts  of  refinement  than  bare  eating  and  drinking, 
so  idealism  from  the  point  of  view  of  worth  towers  above 
objectivism.  It  would  indeed  be  a  strange  contradiction 
if  the  simple  logic  of  the  business  pointed  in  the  opposite 
direction  from  that  indicated  by  all  the  humanities.  So 
thinks  the  idealist;  and  we  shall  find,  perhaps,  that  he  is 
justified,  though  not  exactly  in  the  manner  he  claims. 

A  little  in  exposition  of  the  character  of  the  Great  Subject, 
and  we  may  go  to  the  proofs  of  idealism.  The  hero  of  this 
particular  drama  is  quite  unique.  Just  because  he  is  so  great 
he  forfeits  the  concreteness,  the  immediacy,  which  the  in- 
dividual subject  of  our  first  type  possessed.  He  is  tran- 


112  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

scendental,  ideal.  Whether  we  consider  the  "  Transcenden- 
tal Ego"  of  Kant,  the  "Universal  Ego"  of  Fichte  or 
Schelling,  the  "  Self  "  of  Royce,  the  "  Sollen  "  of  Rickert, 
the  "  Over-will  "  of  Miinsterberg,  we  find  the  same  hyper- 
empirical  quality.  Rickert  assures  us  that  the  consciousness 
of  which  he  is  treating  is  "  keine  Realitat,  sondern  ein 
Begriff."  (Der  Gegenstand  der  Erkenntnis,  2te.  Aufgabe, 
pp.  67,  149.)  Royce  regards  the  Self  as  not  a  datum  but  an 
ethical  ideal  (World  and  Individual,  I,  p.  287).  So  too  Miin- 
sterberg,  very  emphatically  (The  Eternal  Values,  p.  90).  The 
rationalistic  "school"  of  modern  Germany,  with  its  "reines 
Denken  "  deals  with  a  similarly  implicative  affair,  tran- 
scending particular  experiences.  Indeed,  the  traditional 
proof  of  this  Great  Subject  is  by  implication.  The  corner- 
stone of  idealism  is  thus  not  itself  an  observable  fact,  though 
it  may  be  a  fact  and  founded  upon  fact.  It  has  an  inferential 
character.  From  the  very  beginning  idealism  has  the  pale 
cast  of  thought,  of  rationalism  as  opposed  to  empiricism.  It 
is  not,  as  we  have  already  seen  in  another  respect,  a  genuine 
synthesis  of  the  two;  it  is  an  asymmetrical  construction. 
The  universe's  centre  of  gravity  lies  on  the  side  of  thought. 
The  form  is  more  than  the  matter;  though  the  matter  is  real 
enough,  it  is  real  as  secondary  to,  or  dependent  upon,  the 
form.  Whatever  categories  idealism  delivers  to  us  it  derives 
not  by  induction  from  the  empirically  verified  contents  of 
experience  but  by  deduction  from  the  forms  of  ideal  thought. 
Causality,  to  take  an  example,  is  treated  as  a  linkage  by 
which  the  mind  as  it  were  joins  events  externally,  rather 
than  anything  proceeding  out  of  the  nature  of  the  events 
themselves.  So  the  table  of  categories  offered  by  idealism  is 
not  based  upon  the  specific  detail  of  fact  and  event  but  upon 
the  implication  drawn  from  certain  intellectual  ideals.  For 
mind,  the  artist,  orders  the  data  and  hence  the  categories  are 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  1 1 3 

due  to  mind  alone.  Like  the  bridegroom  at  a  wedding,  the 
specific  data  must  be  present,  but  their  appearance  is  of  no 
particular  interest.  Idealism  is  herein  rightly  named;  it  is 
the  doctrine  of  certain  intellectual,  moral,  and  aesthetic 
ideals. 

And  yet  this  is  but  half  the  truth.  The  hero  of  our  present 
type  may  be  "  sicklied  o'er  "  with  transcendental  attributes, 
but  he  is  neither  ghost  nor  skeleton.  More  recent  idealism, 
such  as  that  of  Royce,  has  endowed  him  with  a  goodly  share 
of  flesh  and  blood;  by  means  of  a  diet  drawn  from  psy- 
chological products.  For  there  is  an  empirical  side  of  the 
whole  matter  —  indeed,  there  has  been,  from  the  very  birth 
of  idealism  in  Kant;  though  it  is  much  thickened  today. 
The  Universal  Mind  is  a  Subject  and  that  usually  means  a 
Self.  Now  a  Self  is  after  all  something  we  believe  to  partici- 
pate in  our  concrete  life,  and  its  habits  and  constitution  have 
long  been  studied  in  the  empirical  discipline  of  psychology. 
Much  of  idealism's  doctrine  about  the  Great  Subject  will 
then,  of  necessity,  be  empirically  based.  The  categories  will 
be,  not  merely  ideals,  but  human  ideals,  the  ideals  men  have 
actually  felt  and  worked  towards  and  are  constantly  em- 
ploying. The  table  of  categories  will  be  discovered  by  analy- 
sis of  the  human  mind.  Even  so  Kant  found  his  table  in 
the  kinds  of  judgment  made  by  men;  and  though  this 
psychological  tendency  is  repudiated  by  some  later  idealists, 
they  nevertheless,  as  we  shall  see,  follow  it.  If  the  idealist  is 
not  empirically  minded  with  respect  to  the  objective  world 
—  he  is  not  greatly  concerned,  whether  matter  is  reduced  to 
electrons  or  a  continuous  ether  —  he  nevertheless  is  em- 
pirically minded  with  regard  to  the  subjective  world.  He  is 
interested  in  psychology  above  all  other  sciences.  He 
scrutinizes,  hard  and  long,  the  operations  of  the  human,  or 
even  the  animal,  mind.  Psychology  has  become  the  "  key 


114  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

to  the  scriptures."  The  world-knot  is  most  promisingly 
attacked  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  internal  meaning  of  an 
idea.  (Royce,  World  and  Individual,  I,  p.  i.)  Psychology 
is  the  one  science  which  the  philosopher  must  know.  (Alas, 
that  the  psychologists  do  not  respond  to  these  overtures 
with  the  converse  declaration!) 

In  this  empirical  aspect,  whose  manifold  consequences  will 
soon  appear,  there  is  gain  as  well  as  loss  to  idealism.  That 
there  is  gain  appears  when  we  contrast  idealism  with  ab- 
solutism. The  latter  is,  as  we  have  said,  a  doctrine  of 
symmetry.  No  one  part  or  aspect  of  the  universe  is  by  itself 
more  fertile  for  the  understanding  of  the  rest,  than  any 
other.  The  result  is  that  distinctions  of  high  and  low, 
ground  and  consequent,  better  and  worse,  tend  to  vanish. 
True,  absolutism  admits  them ;  yet  in  the  end  it  is  so  equally 
tolerant  of  everything  as  to  emphasize  nothing.  Idealism, 
however,  avowedly  selects  for  study  as  the  most  efficient 
member  of  the  universe,  the  self  or  person,  and  thereby  has 
been  able  to  furnish  much  information  about  at  least  one 
particular  topic.  There  is  a  concreteness  about  recent 
idealistic  doctrines  which  absolutism,  with  all  its  verbal 
insistence  upon  the  concrete,  does  not  display.  The  narrow- 
ness of  idealism,  like  that  of  human  attention,  renders  pos- 
sible a  concentration  upon  one  problem  which  has  effected  a 
definite  addition  to  our  knowledge.  What  this  addition  is 
will  appear  as  we  proceed  in  the  discussion. 

The  loss  to  idealism  which  its  preoccupation  with  mind 
occasions  is  not  only  that  its  treatment  of  scientific  cate- 
gories is  quite  formal,  but  also  that  it  confines  itself  to  a  field 
in  which  results  are  none  too  certain.  Psychology  as  an 
independent  science  with  a  clear-cut  method  did  not  exist 
when  idealism  was  launched;  it  has  even  now,  perhaps, 
hardly  got  a  precipitate  of  truth  outside  the  realm  of  sensa- 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  1 1 5 

tion.  Any  alleged  facts  about  the  self  on  which  idealism 
may  build  are  therefore  probably  open  to  question  for  some 
time  to  come.  Indeed,  individual  idealists,  not  being  con- 
strained by  a  generally  accepted  psychological  doctrine,  are 
at  liberty  to  emphasize  this  or  that  side  of  mind  almost  at 
pleasure.  Consequently  we  find  that  idealism  splits  into 
factions.  One  "  school  "  views  mind  as  fundamentally 
thought,  another  as  will,  another  as  feeling.  Upon  these 
different  bases  are  erected  the  philosophic  structures  known 
as  rationalistic  idealism,  voluntarism,  and  aesthetic  idealism. 
This  fission  into  three  began  with  Kant,  but  his  strong  hand 
prevented  it  from  developing  into  an  internecine  strife. 
Later  philosophy  has  not  been  so  fortunate.  Today  we  find 
the  rationalistic  party  of  Cohen,  Natorp,  Cassirer;  the 
voluntaristic  one  of  Wundt,  Windelband,  Rickert,*  Royce, 
with  Miinsterberg's  system  shading  through  value-idealism 
into  the  third  division,  the  aesthetic,  which  Baldwin's  "Pan- 
calism  "  has  occupied.  This  tripartition  appeared  earlier, 
in  the  divergencies  of  Kant,  Fichte,  the  "  romantic  school  " 
and  much  of  Schelling.  And  one  hardly  sees  how,  in  view  of 
the  present  dissensions  of  psychology,  the  spirit  of  strife  is 
to  be  laid. 

The  plot,  then,  has  thickened.  We  have  on  our  hands  not 
only  the  rupture  between  idealism  and  its  external  foe, 
realism,  but  also  a  war  within  the  idealists'  camp.  Let  us 
proceed  without  dfelay  to  exhibit  in  detail,  and  to  judge,  the 
various  idealistic  theses. 

THE  CASE  FOR  THE  GREAT  SUBJECT 

The  Universal  Mind  or  Self,  differentia  of  the  type  as  a 
whole,  is  founded  upon  two  arguments  and  two  only.  The 

*  Of  course  Rickert  does  not  fit  this  scheme  any  too  well:  his  "  So  lien  " 
is  so  impersonal  as  to  place  him  almost  on  the  edge  of  realism. 


Il6  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

first  has  been  many  times  stated  and  restated,  from  Kant  on, 
and  if  we  once  more  restate  it  in  our  own  way,  it  is  with  the 
hope  that  it  will  not  go  unrecognized  for  the  true  tran- 
scendental argument.  We  may  refer  to  it  as  the  argument 
from  fertility.  The  second,  as  the  above  analysis  would 
lead  us  to  expect,  is  the  counterpart  of  the  first,  and  is  based 
on  psychology.  It  offers  empirical  evidence  of  the  reality  of 
the  Great  Self.  There  are  in  idealism  proper,  apart  from 
subjectivism,  no  rebuttals  of  the  external  enemy;  because 
idealism's  method  is  the  positive  one  of  justifying  itself  by 
its  fertility  and  by  psychological  testimony.  Its  hypothesis 
of  the  Great  Self  is  accepted  on  the  ground  that  it  accounts 
for  the  well-ordered  world  of  objects  (Kant  called  it  the  list 
of  valid  synthetic  judgments  a  priori] ;  and  also  because  our 
inner  consciousness  bears  witness  to  the  presence  of  that 
Being. 

Before  proceeding,  however,  to  this  argument,  we  must 
notice  a  certain  way  of  putting  its  case  which  has,  we  think, 
tended  to  obliterate  the  distinction  between  Great  and 
ordinary  subjectivism.  It  runs  as  follows  (Royce,  World 
and  Individual,  vol.  I,  p.  398).  "  Are  these  many  knowers 
related  or  not  ?  Answer  as  you  will.  .  .  .  Then  this,  the 
fact  about  their  relations,  exists,  but  exists  only  as  a  known 
fact.  For  our  theory  asserts  universally  that  all  which  has 
Being  exists  only  as  a  known  object."  And  (p.  399)  "But 
this  assertion  .  .  .  implies  that  one  final  knower  knows  all 
the  knowing  processes  in  one  inclusive  act."  In  short,  what- 
ever is  real  is  present  to  a  mind.  But  many  things  are  real 
that  are  not  present  to  any  finite  mind,  viz.,  remote  stars, 
the  beginnings  of  the  earth,  etc.  Hence  there  must  be  a 
mind  to  which  these  things  are  present,  i.  e.,  a  Big  Mind. 
Now  this  seems  to  be  a  patent  fallacy.  It  is  not  proved  that 
all  objects  are  for  a  mind  until  these  distant  ones  are  shown 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  1 17 

to  be  such.  They  can  be  shown  to  be,  as  we  saw  in  Chapter 
III,  but  the  mind  for  which  they  are  objects  was  there  found 
to  be  one's  own  —  or  some  one's  else  —  particular  mind, 
which  is  thinking  of  them  during  the  argument.  Or  perhaps 
even  the  mind  of  some  astronomer  or  geologist  —  but  in  any 
case  some  one,  or  some  finite  number  of  human  minds. 
These  things  were  recognized  to  be  its  potential,  if  not  its 
actual,  objects.  Here  lies  no  road  to  a  Universal  Mind.  The 
argument  tries  to  get  idealism  from  subjectivism  alone; 
whereas  it  must  be  drawn  from  the  marriage  of  subjectivism 
with  objectivism.  It  is  unfortunate  for  the  cause  of  Great 
Subjectivism  that  such  a  plea  has  been  presented. 

The  argument  from  fertility  we  now  restate.  How  is  it  that 
the  Self,  impregnating  the  object,  fathers  the  categories  ? 
To  learn  this  we  had  best  turn  to  the  group  of  midwives  who 
have  delivered  them:  from  Kant  to  Natorp,  Miinsterberg, 
Cassirer,  Royce,  and  Baldwin.  We  find  common  to  them 
all  something  like  the  following  train  of  thought. 

Subjectivism  could  not  account  for  the  distinction  be- 
tween real  and  imaginary  objects.  Subjectivists  have  had 
to  resort  to  some  haphazard  attribute  of  the  mind's  contents 
in  order  to  distinguish  the  two;  viz.,  intensity,  liveliness, 
resistance,  space-occupancy,  commonness,  etc.  But  what 
constitutes  objective  reality  ?  This:  that  an  object  out- 
lasts my  momentary  perception,  or  that  of  any  one.  It 
stands  always  ready  to  be  perceived  by  any  one  at  any  mo- 
ment of  its  continuous  existence;  it  is,  as  contrasted  with 
the  particular  perceptions,  a  universal.  Its  reality  in  fact 
consists  in  just  this  universality.  As  a  universal  tran- 
scends any  particular,  so  the  real  object  transcends  the 
particular  perception  of  the  particular  subject.  But  if  we 
suppose  a  subject  to  whom  all  the  momentary  states  of  the 
object  are  always  present,  the  real  object  will  not  transcend 


Il8  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

his  mind  but  may  be  adequately  described  as  the  content 
thereof.  Such  a  subject  could  not  truly  be  said  to  be  quite 
timeless,  for  it  includes  all  the  particular  elements  in  any 
process  of  change;  Royce's  ascription  to  it  of  an  indefi- 
nitely long  "specious  present"  is  fairer.  Now  such  a  sup- 
position is  very  fertile;  it  accounts  for  much  more  than 
the  object  in  general.  For  it  entertains  universals;  and  a 
universal  is  a  rule,  capable  of  exemplification  in  many  in- 
stances. Every  object  that  is  real  is  such  a  rule;  viz.,  a  cow 
may  be  characterized  as  that  object  which  can  be  counted 
on  to  appear  and  behave  in  certain  definite  ways.  Unless 
that  regularity  of  appearance  and  behaviour  were  traceable, 
there  would  for  us  be  no  such  object  as  a  cow.  A  real  object 
then  is  that  which  obeys  laws — the  laws  of  its  own  make-up. 
Law  is  "  das  letzte  erreichbare  Kriterium  der  '  Objekti- 
vitat.' '  (Cassirer,  Substanztheorie  und  Funktionstheorie, 
p.  248.)  And  a  subject  whose  mental  content  is  a  real  object 
is  by  that  very  fact  one  whose  mental  content  is  a  number  of 
laws.  The  laws  of  nature,  or  the  assemblage  of  the  ways  in 
which  objects  behave,  are  the  content  of  that  mind.  And 
since  "  object  "  is  here  perfectly  general,  it  follows  that  all 
reality,  and  its  laws,  form  the  content  of  the  mind  in  ques- 
tion. Hence  it  is  seen  to  be  no  less  than  a  Universal  Mind. 
Since  also  the  real  objects  are  no  longer  transcendent  of  the 
Universal  Mind  as  they  were  of  the  particular  subject,  the 
Universal  Mind  does  not  passively  receive  those  objects  as  it 
were  from  an  external  agency,  but,  arranging  them  by  its 
laws,  helps  to  determine  them.  In  Kantian  words,  its 
knowledge  is  constitutive.  As  there  is  no  longer  anything 
outside  it,  the  Great  Mind  may  now  be  conceived  as  con- 
trolling its  own  content.  It  does  not  create  it  ex  nihilo  but, 
finding  the  content  as  it  were  within  its  own  mind,  it  confers 
objectivity  upon  it.  Objectivity,  as  distinguished  from 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  119 

mere  being-other-than-mind,  is  the  work,  the  artifact  of 
mind,  the  result  of  its  labour.  "  Wirklichkeit  selbst,  Gege- 
benheit  ist  Denkbestimmung,  und  zuletzt  Leistung  reinen 
Denkens."  (Natorp,  Die  Logischen  Grundlagen  der  Exakten 
Wissenschaften,  p.  66.)  Now  from  the  concept  of  the  uni- 
versal the  main  categories  which  describe  objectivity  can  be 
deduced.  For  the  universal  offers  a  series  of  instances 
grouped  into  a  class;  whence  are  drawn  the  notions  of  unity, 
plurality,  totality,  etc.  As  to  the  detail  of  the  categories, 
there  has  been  some  difference  between  the  lists  offered  by 
different  philosophers.  The  finished  deduction  is  not  found 
in  the  pioneer  Kant,  but  only  in  quite  recent  times,  chiefly 
in  the  elaborate  and  painstaking  systems  of  Natorp  and 
Miinsterberg.  Kant  in  the  "  Schematism  "  just  missed 
deducing  the  particular  categories.  He  started  from  the 
notion  of  time,  which  is  of  intuitive  origin,  rather  than  from 
the  universal.  Fichte  did  better,  by  starting  from  process 
as  the  essence  of  mind;  and  that  dynamic  basis  is  now  fairly 
well  accepted  by  idealists.  (Cf.  Natorp,  op.  cit.,  p.  15.) 
But  the  development  of  the  scientific  categories  out  of  the 
bare  concept  of  object  —  i.  e.,  out  of  the  universal  mind  — 
had  been  consummated  by  Natorp.  On  the  practical  side, 
the  extraordinarily  detailed  labours  of  Miinsterberg  far 
exceed  any  previous  work;  and  on  the  aesthetic  side,  nearly 
the  same  is  true  of  Baldwin.  In  these  finished  products,  the 
ripest  fruit  of  idealism,  the  earlier  errors  are  corrected, 
minute  links  strengthened,  and  the  whole  system  perfected 
almost,  it  would  seem,  to  the  limit  of  human  capability.  We 
therefore  select  them  as  examples  of  idealistic  deduction; 
they  are  the  great  outstanding  instances  of  idealism's  argu- 
ment from  fertility.  And  hereby  we  are  led  from  the  parent 
stem  to  the  three  branches  of  idealism. 


120  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

In  summing  up  his  standpoint  at  the  outset  Natorp  re- 
marks "  So  kann  also  von  keinem  '  gegebenen  '  Gegenstande 
mehr  die  Rede  sein;  also  auch  nicht  von  Erkenntnis  als 
blosser  Analyse  dieses  Gegebenen.  Gerade  der  Gegenstand 
viehmehr  ist  Aufgabe,  ist  Problem  ins  Unendliche.  Und  also 
ist  Erkenntnis,  als  auf  den  Gegenstand  gerichtet,  not- 
wendig  Synthesis  in  Kants  Sinne,  d.  h.  Erweiterung, 
bestandiger  Fortgang  "  (op.  cit.,  p.  18).  It  is  an  endless 
task  which  the  creative  mind  has,  that  of  constituting  the 
object;  in  this  progress  new  qualifications  of  that  object 
appear,  new  categories.  Indeed  the  object  itself  is  that 
task:  "Das  Objekt  der  Erkenntnis  wird  Projekt,  der 
Gegenwurf  Vorwurf  "  (p.  33).  (The  similarity  between  this 
definition  of  "  object  "  and  Royce's  definition  of  it  as  fulfil- 
ment of  a  plan  of  action  is  striking;  indeed  both  say  much 
the  same  thing.  The  former  says  it  in  intellectualistic,  the 
latter  in  voluntaristic,  phrasing;  a  fact  whose  significance 
shall  engage  us  later.)  To  the  solution,  endless  in  its  detail, 
of  this  problem  of  determining  the  object,  we  now  pass. 
From  the  synthetic  unity  of  the  manifold,  by  which  the 
mind  generates  objectivity,  is  derived  the  category  of 
quantity  (the  many,  the  totality,  etc.).  This  includes  the 
concept  of  the  unit;  a  purely  formal  entity,  for  "  Was  in 
jedem  Falle  als  Eines  gelte,  ist  hierfiir  gleichgiiltig  "  (p.  54). 
The  content  of  it  is  anything  you  please,  and  is  not  deduced 
or  explained.  But  there  is  more  than  one  unit.  A  second 
unit  is  implied  —  else  no  collection  or  group  to  embody  the 
universal  (p.  55) ;  but  this  too  must  be  followed  by  another, 
for  the  same  reason,  and  so  on.  Here  we  have  the  series. 
"  Wohl  der  bezeichnendste  Ausdruck  dafiir  ist  die  Reihe 
oder  Reihung,  Auf-  und  Aneinanderreihung "  (p.  55).  This 
notion  of  series  replaces,  indeed,  the  older  notion  of  the 
static  concept;  a  fact  constantly  emphasized  by  Cassirer. 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  121 

That  thinker  is  never  weary  of  insisting  upon  the  difference 
between  the  two.  (Cf.  Substanztheorie  und  Funktions- 
theorie,  pp.  7-9,  n,  15,  22-23,  27,  33-34,  247,  249,  297, 
305.)  But  to  proceed  with  the  deduction:  since  the  mind 
unites  as  well  as  differentiates,  there  is  at  each  step  an 
awareness  of  the  whole  result.  At  the  third  step  in  a  series, 
for  instance,  there  is  present  a  sense  of  the  totality  already 
attained.  Hence  arises  the  concept  of  the  "  how  much  " 
("  Das  bestimmte  Soviet  "  p.  56).  This  is  a  novel  creation 
of  the  thought:  three  is  quite  distinct  from  "  one-and-one- 
and-one." 

But  now  the  universal,  the  synthesis  of  the  many  in  one, 
is  not  exhausted  by  any  total  number  of  instances.  It  is 
something  more,  something  yet  to  be  determined.  This 
discrepancy  shows  that  the  categories  of  extensive  quantity 
are  inadequate.  The  mind  has  not  yet  solved  its  own  prob- 
lem of  determining  a  real  object.  Not  in  extent,  but  in  con- 
tent; not  by  external  addition  of  one  case  to  another,  but 
by  looking  inward  to  the  nature  of  the  instances,  shall  mind 
define  that  object.  The  successive  instances  (not  neces- 
sarily successive  in  time,  of  course :  we  might  be  comparing 
various  perspectives  of  one  object  as  seen  by  you,  by  me,  by 
some  one  else,  etc.,  all  at  one  moment)  —  the  successive 
instances  are  now  viewed  as  presenting  identity  with  one 
another.  A  tree  is  the  same  tree,  and  has  much  the  same 
perceptual  content,  throughout  the  variety  of  particular 
presentations  in  which  it  appears.  This  gives  rise  to  the 
qualitative  categories  of  identity  and  difference.  These 
categories,  like  those  of  quantity,  are  indifferent  to  the 
specific  characters  of  the  objects;  "  Was  in  jedem  Fall  als 
Identisches  gesetzt  wird,  ist  hierbei  so  gleichgiiltig,  wie  bei 
der  ersten  Stufe  der  Quantitat  .  .  ."  (p.  60).  And  identity 
and  difference  are  mutually  involved.  Now  precisely  as  in 


122  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

quantity  the  unit  and  the  multiplicity  united  to  form  the 
concept  of  totality,  so  here  the  series  of  like  instances,  with 
their  individuating  differences,  combine  to  give  the  notion 
of  the  class  or  species  ("  Gattung,"  p.  62).  Here  we  find,  by 
the  way,  a  decided  improvement  over  Kant's  artificial  triad 
of  positive,  negative,  and  infinite. 

Yet  if  an  object  is  to  be  real  it  is  more  than  quantity  and 
quality;  it  has  a  regular,  identifiable  behaviour.  A  definite 
object  is  a  synthesis  of  the  manifold;  but  to  be  identifiable 
as  itself  it  must  be  distinguished  from  other  syntheses  of  the 
manifold,  other  objects.  Hence  arise  the  categories  of  rela- 
tion, or  the  "  syntheses  of  syntheses  "  (p.  66).  These  must 
comprise  the  relations  which  objects  bear  to  one  another  — 
their  behaviour.  As  this  is  to  be  determined  beforehand  (for 
objects  must  be  identifiable)  it  must  obey  causal  laws  —  in 
mathematical  language,  functional  relations.  The  different 
instances  of  each  object  and  of  the  relations  between  objects, 
must  then  form  a  series  whose  members  display  an  orderly 
functional  relation;  they  form,  that  is,  an  ordered  series. 
The  later  members  of  the  series  are  determinable,  calculable, 
from  the  earlier  members  —  or  vice  versa.  And  since  there 
are  many  objects,  we  may  regard  the  several  series  of  in- 
stances each  of  which  comprises  a  particular  thing,  as 
parallel  series.  That  being  the  case,  there  will  be  a  strict 
one-one-correspondence  between  the  instances  of  various 
series,  such  that  from  one  of  them  another  may  be  deter- 
mined. We  then  have  not  merely  the  regular  behaviour  of 
each  object,  but,  going  with  that,  the  mutual  dependence  of 
objects.  The  world  of  nature  is  "  eine  Ordnung,  die  sich 
von  Glied  zu  Glied  verschiedener,  aber  unter  sich  in  Ver- 
kniipfung  stehender  paralleler  Reihen  muss  durchfiihren 
lassen  "  (p.  69).  Now  such  an  order  implies  a  permanent  or 
standard  series,  by  comparison  with  which  the  changes  alone 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  123 

become  apparent.  This  demand  of  science  for  a  persisting 
somewhat  (mass,  energy)  is  again  indifferent  to  the  content 
of  fact;  for  no  permanent  entities  appear  in  sense-experience. 
The  category  of  substance  is  a  creation  of  reason,  not  a 
given  percept.  "  Dass  eine  solche  empirisch  gegebenen 
weder  ist  noch  je  werden  konnte,  macht  es  nur  urn  so 
fiihlbarer,  dass  diese  Ansetzung  eine  reine  Denkleistung  ist 
und  kein  Datum  "  (p.  72). 

Here  arises  the  concept  of  time,  as  the  single  fundamental 
order  common  to  all  that  occurs.  "  Sie  (time)  bedeutet  also 
eben  dies:  dass  eine  gemeinsam  zugrunde  liegende  gleich- 
formige  Ordungsfolge  sein  miisse,  welche  in  den  sich  ent- 
sprechenden  Stellziffern  der  Einzelreihen :  Xi  x*  x3  .  .  .  , 
yiy^ys  .  .  •  ,  Zi  ZzZs  .  .  .  und  so  fort  sich  ausdriicken 
wiirde;  durch  deren  Identitat  dann  alle  diese  verschiedenen 
Reihen  zugleich  aufeinander  in  einer  gemeinsamen  Ordnung 
bezogen  sein  wiirden  "  (p.  73).  If  three  objects  x,  y,  and  z, 
have  each  the  states  denoted  by  the  subscript  numerals, 
then  the  order  /,  2,  3,  etc.,  of  those  numerals,  demanded  as 
a  common  fundamental  order,  the  same  in  all,  is  nothing  less 
than  time.  The  relation  of  coexistence  ("  Miteinander," 
p.  73)  between  x,  y,  and  z,  with  the  added  qualification  that 
they  are  individually  distinct  and  separate  facts,  forms  the 
category  of  space.  Natorp  characterizes  space  as  "  Ordnung 
des  Miteinander  "  (pp.  73-74).  The  reason  for  the  plurality 
of  dimensions  in  space  is  not  given  at  this  point,  but  in  a 
later  chapter;  for  convenience  we  omit  it.  This  will  later 
be  seen  not  to  affect  our  criticism.  Now  when  the  mind  re- 
gards objects  as  following  in  a  definite  time-order,  such  that 
earlier  determines  later,  it  is  employing  the  category  of 
causality.  When  it  regards  contemporaneous  objects  in  space 
as  in  the  fixed  order  of  space,  determining  one  another 
by  their  positions  in  that  order,  it  uses  the  category  of  red- 


124  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

procity  ("  Wechselwirkung").  In  causality,  the  earlier  state 
is  followed,  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  behaviour  of  that 
particular  object,  by  the  later.  And  this  holds  also  of  more 
than  one  object;  it  holds  of  the  relations  between  objects. 
But  it  too,  like  the  other  categories,  is  indifferent  to  the 
specific  detail  of  things.  If  it  happens  to  be  a  law  of  nature 
that  the  sun  warms  a  stone,  then  the  placing  of  the  stone  in 
the  sun's  rays  is  followed  by  the  stone's  increased  tempera- 
ture: but  causality  alone  cannot  determine  that  the  law 
should  be  that  particular  sequence.  The  law  might  have 
been  that  the  sun  cooled  the  stone,  or  disintegrated  it,  or 
anything  you  please. 

Let  the  above  suffice  as  an  example  of  the  idealistic 
method  in  the  field  of  intellect  or  science.  Nine  —  no, 
eleven  —  categories  have  been  deduced ;  and  deduced  from 
the  concept  of  the  universal  mind  —  i.  e.,  the  mind  which 
has  the  universal  as  its  content.  Two  things  stand  out 
clearly:  first,  that  the  deduction  derives  its  force  from  the 
side  of  the  universal,  not  in  the  least  from  that  of  mind,  and 
second,  that  the  categories  deduced  are  not  in  general  those 
which  science  actually  employs. 

The  categories  of  one,  many,  total,  identity,  difference, 
series,  are  simply  read  off  from  the  definition  of  a  universal. 
A  universal  is  understood  at  the  outset  to  mean  a  series  of 
instances  as  numerous  as  you  please,  which  are  different 
instances  of  the  same.  The  categories  of  time,  space,  sub- 
stance, cause,  reciprocity,  are  read  off  from  the  concept  of 
several  universals  (objects)  present  together  before  the  mind. 
Whether  there  is  a  novelty  produced  at  each  stage  of  the 
reading-off  process  or  not,  we  do  not  ask;  but  if  there  is,  it 
is  not  due  to  the  mind.  Once  granted  the  universal,  or  the 
group  of  universals,  the  categories  that  follow  are  compelled 
to  follow  by  the  nature  of  the  universal.  They  could  not  be 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  125 

other  than  what  they  are.  The  mind  may  be  there  to  read 
them  off,  but  that  is  a  very  different  thing  from  its  deter- 
mining them  to  be  what  they  are.  It  is  simply  present,  and 
they  become  its  objects;  but  it  is  as  passive  and  inert  as  the 
particular  self  in  subjectivism.  The  "  problem  "  which  the 
object  offers  to  mind  is  simply  that  of  ascertaining  what  it 
contains.  There  is,  we  venture  to  say,  no  authority  what- 
soever for  calling  this  an  active  ordering  on  the  part  of  the 
mind,  or  for  asserting  that  mind  helps  to  account  for  any- 
thing present.  The  apparent  justification  for  such  an  asser- 
tion lies,  perhaps,  in  that  a  universal  is  supposed  itself  to  be  a 
mental  product.  This,  however,  we  have  in  our  examination 
of  subjectivism  found  quite  unproved.  Indeed,  we  found  it 
to  be  a  matter  of  indifference.  So  here :  the  Great  Mind  is  a 
true  faineant  king;  its  presence  or  absence  makes  no  differ- 
ence to  the  deductive  fecundity  of  the  starting  point.  The 
universal  happens  to  be  a  very  rich  concept,  and  therefore 
Natorp  is  able  to  draw  from  it  many  categories;  but  one 
can  scarcely  read  his  treatise  without  feeling  that  the 
"  Denken  "  might  just  as  well  be  called  "  Realitat  "  or  any 
other  objective  term. 

The  categories  which  Natorp  deduces  are  not  in  general, 
we  have  said,  those  which  science  uses.  As  to  what  science 
uses,  indeed,  there  appears  to  be  an  ambiguity.  Consider, 
for  instance,  the  science  of  physics.  This  has  two  aspects: 
the  experimental  and  the  mathematical.  The  one  is  just  as 
necessary  to  it  as  the  other.  The  laws  of  physics  are  verified 
in  the  laboratory  as  true  within  the  limits  of  probable  error. 
They  apply  to  particular  real  events.  But  philosophers  un- 
fortunately tend  nowadays  to  study  almost  exclusively  the 
mathematical  side.  In  stating  the  concepts  which  science 
uses,  they  look  to  the  implications  of  the  mathematical 
calculations  which  the  physicists  make.  Time,  as  used  by 


126  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

physics,  then  appears  to  be  a  certain  ordinal  relation,  and 
no  more.  Space  suffers  the  same  ravishment.  Force  is  a 
numerical  ratio  simply;  in  fact,  everything  tends  to  be- 
come number  or  quantity  or  function.  But  on  the  experi- 
mental side,  physics  appeals  to  the  senses;  and  the  concepts 
force,  time,  space,  cause,  etc.,  are  no  longer  mere  numbers, 
but  properties  of  events,  visible,  or  verifiable,  resident  in 
sense-data.  The  full  meaning  of  the  scientific  categories 
cannot  be  learned  from  their  numerical  values  alone;  they 
are  concepts  which  apply  to  the  sense-data,  and  their  mean- 
ing must  be  learned  also  from  their  manifestation  in  those 
data.  Natorp,  we  found,  insisted  frequently  that  his  cate- 
gories were  indifferent  to  their  sensuous  content.  But  no 
true  scientific  category  is  thus  indifferent.  Time,  for  ex- 
ample, cannot  be  predicated  of  any  content;  only  of  con- 
tents which  change.  Space  as  such  is  not  in  time,  numbers 
are  not  in  time.  So  of  space:  not  every  "  Miteinander  "  is 
spatial,  but  only  those  which  have  certain  relations  to 
(actual  or  possible)  vision  and  touch.  The  space  and  time 
that  are  used  in  experiment  are  sense-data;  but  Natorp's 
space  and  time  are  not  sense-data  at  all.  They  have  no  ex- 
tensity  or  pastness  or  futurity.  The  causality  by  virtue  of 
which  one  body  warms  another  body  is  of  such  a  kind  that 
the  wanned  body  could  not,  under  the  circumstances,  have 
become  cool;  the  content  of  the  effect  is  here  by  no  means 
"  gleichgiiltig."  Why  certain  effects  and  not  others  follow 
certain  causes,  is  not  even  suggested  by  idealism.  Why 
"  Miteinander  "  takes  on  the  appearance  of  length,  or 
position,  or  extension,  why  time  means  the  passing  into  non- 
existence  and  rising  into  existence,  of  things  —  these  are  left 
quite  out  of  account.  All  that  the  idealist  does  is  to  develop 
from  his  starting  point  a  list  of  ideals  which  in  one  aspect  of 
its  work  science  does  approximate;  but  these  ideals  do  not, 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  127 

beyond  a  very  slight  extent,  define  the  concrete  actuality 
with  which  the  scientist  experiments.  In  short,  rationalistic 
idealism  does  not  account  for  the  specific  characters  found  in 
the  world  of  objects.  Like  subjectivism,  it  is  philosophically 
barren. 

This  is  no  denial  of  its  truth.  The  Universal  Mind,  such 
as  it  is,  may  be  admitted  to  be.  An  object  undoubtedly  is  a 
universal,  and  hence  it  contains  a  series  whose  instances  are 
numerable.  And  the  mind  which  entertains  these  various 
concepts  is  no  doubt  an  object  of  possible  interest.  But  that 
that  mind  is  Great  in  the  sense  of  ruling  nature,  directing  her 
courses,  setting  the  stars  in  their  places,  guiding  human  des- 
tiny, etc.  —  this  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  logical 
starting  point  or  with  the  result  of  rationalistic  idealism. 
The  practical  and  emotional  motives  of  the  type  remain 
unfulfilled. 

This  has  been  felt,  one  may  opine,  by  the  voluntaristic 
idealists;  and  they  have  believed  that  the  abstractness  of  the 
category-maker's  results  would  be  filled  out  if  they  could 
show  that  the  Universal  Mind  is  a  Will.  For  will  is  active 
and  creative  (so  the  common  man  thinks) ;  and  if  the  world 
be  object  of  a  Great  Will  then  it  may  be  truly  said  to  be  no 
abstraction.  No  other  human  faculty  so  appeals  to  our  sense 
of  the  concrete  as  will.  Let  us  then  examine  the  deduction 
given  by  a  voluntaristic  idealist  of  the  main  characters  of 
reality.  Surely  a  system  which  is  based  on  will,  must  satisfy 
the  deeper  yearnings  of  our  practical  and  emotional  nature. 
We  are  here  so  fortunate  as  to  possess  a  most  elaborate 
deduction  of  this  sort:  Professor  Miinsterberg's  book  "  The 
Eternal  Values."  True,  his  fundamental  concept,  value,  is 
not  merely  volitional,  but  contains  a  tincture  of  feeling  also. 
But  so  much  the  better,  for  then  we  may  expect  the  greater 
wealth  of  results. 


128  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Everything  is  to  be  determined  by  deduction  from  a  will- 
attitude,  yet  not  from  a  bare  will-attitude,  but  from  one  that 
seeks  and  makes  its  own  satisfaction,  i.  e.,  determines  values. 
(Often  Miinsterberg  speaks  of  will  alone,  but  it  is  to  be 
understood  as  will  which  in  fulfilling  its  purposes  creates 
values.)  That  the  will  rather  than  passion  or  contemplation 
is  fundamental,  is  thus  signified:  "  Especially  in  the  modern 
German  philosophy  the  conviction  is  growing  that  the  con- 
ception of  being  itself  is  founded  on  the  conception  of  obliga- 
tion. The  existence  of  reality  is  given  to  us  in  judgments, 
and  their  affirmation  ultimately  has  no  other  reason  than 
the  fact  that  our  thought  faces  a  rule,  an  '  ought,'  which 
obliges  our  will  to  judge.  There  is  no  positive  judgment  of 
existence  in  which  the  will  is  not  affirming,  no  negative 
judgment  in  which  the  will  is  not  denying  "  (Op.  cit.,  p.  54). 
But  obligation  is  not  all.  The  will  gets  satisfaction  in  ful- 
filling the  obligation;  the  attitude  becomes  a  value-attitude. 
"  We  stand  before  the  fundamental  fact  that  there  exists  a 
will  the  fulfilment  of  which  satisfies  us,  and  that  means  is 
valuable  for  us,  and  which  yet  is  without  reference  to  any 
individual  pleasure  or  displeasure,  necessary  for  every  pos- 
sible subject  and  therefore  absolutely  valid"  (p.  65).  Thus 
value  alone  is  the  fundamentum.  It  is  more  ultimate  than 
the  category  of  fact  itself.  "  The  evaluation  precedes  the 
existence  "  (p.  55).  But  this  evaluation  is  not,  in  the  last 
analysis,  an  affair  of  any  private,  finite  self.  It  is  performed 
by  a  Great  Self,  an  "  over-will,"  or  "  over-self  ";  its  per- 
formance or  "  self-realization,"  is  the  "  over-deed."  This 
"  over-will  "  is  the  fans  et  origo  of  all  reality  and  all  special 
values;  it  is  the  generator  of  the  outer  material  world,  of  the 
many  selves  or  "  fellow-world,"  and  of  the  inner  world  of 
each  self.  A  true  philosophy,  according  to  our  author, 
deduces  from  it  space,  time,  and  these  three  worlds,  as  well 
as  the  main  categories  (or  values)  in  each  of  these  worlds. 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  129 

Value  is  then  the  TTOV  O-TCO;  existence  is  simply  one  kind  of 
value.  "  The  existence  of  the  world,  its  reality  and  its  con- 
nection, means  to  us  a  certain  evaluation  of  life-experiences  " 
(p.  351).  And  that  kind  of  evaluation  is  not  more  important 
or  more  certain  than  the  other  kinds  of  evaluation  which  we 
shall  later  meet.  Hence,  the  absolute  will,  the  "  over-self," 
"  is  thus  certainly  not  a  thing  which  has  existence;  the 
fundamental  reality  is  life-activity,  deed  "  (p.  399).  And 
there  is  nothing  besides  this  over-self.  "  We  know  further 
that  the  over-self  does  not  find  any  material  outside  of 
itself  "  (p.  399).  "...  the  will  of  the  over-self  finds  as 
material  only  its  own  willing  "  (p.  404).  This  will  is  not  a 
temporal  process.  "  In  the  beginning  there  was  a  deed,  but 
the  beginning  does  not  lie  in  time,  as  time  is  only  the  form- 
thought  of  that  object-world  which  is  created  by  the  pri- 
mary deed  "  (p.  405).  "  The  world  as  absolute  reality  is 
the  unresolved  unity  of  this  eternal  deed  "  (p.  407). 

How  then  does  this  timeless  valuation,  this  will  or  deed, 
give  rise  to  the  differentiations  which  constitute  the  world  of 
things,  of  selves,  and  of  special  values  ?  Thus:  "  in  every 
will-act  of  ours  the  resolving  analysis  may  find  the  starting 
point  of  the  striving,  the  striving  itself,  and  finally  the  goal 
of  the  striving  which  becomes  realized  "  (p.  407).  (Again, 
we  must  not  yet  think  of  this  as  a  process  occurring  in  time.) 
Now,  "  the  same  must  hold  true  for  the  fundamental  will  of 
the  over-self  "  (ibid.).  Analysis  then  finds  in  the  over-will 
the  same  three  points.  "  The  starting  point  is  that  which 
the  will  no  longer  wills  when  it  seeks  the  goal;  the  goal  is 
that  which  the  striving  has  not  yet  reached  "  (ibid.).  "  In 
the  deed  itself  the  not-yet  and  the  no-longer  are  one.  .  .  . 
But  from  the  standpoint  of  the  detached  striving  factor  of 
the  deed,  the  no-longer  and  the  not-yet  stand  separated 
against  each  other  "  (ibid.).  Between  them  lies  the  striving 


130  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

itself,  a  "  relation-point."  This  relation-point  we  call  the 
now.  From  the  standpoint  of  such  now  the  no-longer  be- 
comes the  past  and  the  not-yet  becomes  the  future.  "  With 
the  resolution  of  the  striving  from  the  atemporal  [sic]  will- 
totality  the  time  is  posited  as  a  relation  between  starting 
point  and  goal  "  (ibid.).  Here  ends  the  deduction  of  the 
category  of  time. 

Next  is  evolved  space.  "  When  the  striving  separates 
itself  from  its  content,  still  a  further  antithesis  is  posited. 
Just  because  the  striving  maintains  the  content  in  the  tran- 
sition from  the  past  to  the  future,  this  content  is  acknowl- 
edged as  something  independent.  It  is  now  not  a  part  of  the 
striving  itself,  is  therefore  outside  of  the  striving  effort,  and 
in  this  way  the  not-here  arises  as  against  the  here  "  (pp.  407- 
408).  The  passage  is  obscure,  for  we  are  not  told  what  the 
"  content  "  may  be.  Why,  too,  does  the  acknowledgment 
that  something  is  independent,  other  than  my  striving,  in- 
volve the  acknowledgment  that  it  is  outside  me  in  space  ? 
Professor  Miinsterberg's  deduction  is  here  no  clearer  than 
its  prototype  in  Fichte's  Wissenschaftslehre.  (We  remember 
how  many  times  Fichte  tried  to  make  this  clear,  in  succes- 
sive editions.)  Why  the  will-deed  gets  a  content  at  all  is  a 
mystery.  Why,  also,  the  content  is  manifold  and  simul- 
taneous, is  equally  so.  "  The  space  at  first  knows  only  one 
opposition,  here  and  without.  But  that  without  refers  to 
the  whole  manifoldness  of  the  simultaneous  contents  " 
(p.  408).  And  also  "  with  every  single  content  the  the  char- 
acter of  the  without  shades  itself  and  becomes  a  particular 
space-direction.  In  this  way  arises  the  endless  manifoldness 
of  space-directions  as  soon  as  the  striving  detaches  itself  from 
the  totality  of  the  deed  "  (ibid.).  From  the  manifoldness 
of  this  space-and-time  world  follows  the  variety  of  strivings, 
the  individual  selves.  Here  then  we  have  the  outer  world, 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  131 

the  fellow-world,  and  the  world  of  each  self  in  puris,  or  the 
inner  world. 

Now  an  empirically  educated  scientist  may  snort  in  dis- 
gust —  we  have  heard  such  emotional  responses  —  with  this 
a  priori  and  (too  often)  obscure  mode  of  explanation.  Nev- 
ertheless we  believe  it  to  have  its  rights.  It  does  explain, 
granted  its  starting  point,  certain  relations  which  are  some- 
thing like  our  space  and  time  manifolds.  "  Something 
like  "  we  say;  we  cannot  say  more.  For  the  space  and  time, 
the  many  objects  and  selves,  of  this  deduction,  are  the  palest 
ghosts  of  the  actual  space,  time,  objects,  and  persons  we 
know.  All  specific  qualities  have  disappeared  from  them: 
space  and  time  are,  as  with  Natorp's  deduction,  mere  order 
and  "  Miteinander."  Extension  is  not  reached  by  Miinster- 
berg's  account,  nor  process  of  change :  —  provided,  that  is, 
there  was  no  time  imported,  at  the  beginning,  into  the  over- 
deed  of  the  over-self.  If,  as  he  says,  analysis  discovers  a 
"  no-longer  "  and  a  "  not-yet  "  in  that  deed,  then  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  see  with  what  justice  the  analysis  may  claim  to  be 
true,  unless  those  temporal  attributes  were  existentially 
present  in  the  original  deed.  If  not,  they  are  certainly  not 
accounted  for  by  the  character  of  the  deed.  All  our  actual 
deeds  in  this  world  are  temporal  processes,  and  do  contain 
such  temporal  distinctions;  therefore  it  seems  easy  to  say 
that  the  original  deed  is  the  source  of  time.  But  the  deed 
has  no  priority  over  the  time;  either  is  meaningless  without 
the  other. 

And  if  concrete  time  and  space  are  not  accounted  for  by 
his  deduction,  neither  is  the  division  into  the  outer  world, 
social  world,  and  inner  world.  For  that  division  hangs  from 
the  manifoldness  which  time  and  space  introduced.  The 
Great  Self  (over-self,  or  over-deed)  does  indeed  account 
as  we  shall  see,  for  objectivity;  and  if  value  means  the 


132  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

identity  of  the  end  with  the  original  intention,  for  value  also ; 
and,  granting  the  three  worlds,  even  for  the  different  kinds 
of  value  in  general.  But  it  does  not  explain  why  any  value 
whatever  comes  to  reside  in  just  the  specific  instances  in 
which  it  is  seen. 

We  may  now  specify  the  stages  by  which  the  valuation 
becomes  a  definite  world.  "  The  one  fundamental  act  which 
secures  for  us  a  world  "  is  this:  "  We  demand  that  there  be 
a  world ;  that  means  that  our  experience  be  more  than  just 
the  passing  experience,  that  it  assert  itself  in  its  identity  in 
new  experiences  "  (p.  75).  (Note  here  in  this  "  identity  " 
the  universal,  which  Natorp  also  started  from,  couched  in 
terms  of  a  will-object.)  "  We  will  that  our  experience  is  a 
world  "  (p.  76).  And  this  is  an  act  of  choice.  "  No  one  can 
be  forced  to  perform  that  deciding  deed  "  (p.  76);  we  may 
be  skeptics  if  we  prefer.  When  identities  throughout  dif- 
ferences —  permanent  recognizable  objects  —  are  found  to 
exist  in  the  world,  our  will-attitude  is  satisfied  and  reality 
becomes  a  value.  From  this  one  fundamental  value  all  the 
others  are  deduced.  "  The  system  of  values  must  then  be 
recognized  as  soon  as  we  ask  what  has  been  really  posited  by 
this  act  of  world-assertion.  It  will  be  the  topic  of  all  the 
following  inquiries  "  (p.  78). 

Four  principal  categories  are  implied.  "  First,  every  part 
must  remain  identical  with  itself  in  the  changing  events  [the 
category  of  the  universal  and  the  other  categories  of  intel- 
lect belong  here] ;  secondly,  the  various  parts  must  show  in 
a  certain  sense  identity  among  themselves,  and  thus  show 
that  they  agree  with  one  another  and  that  no  one  part  of  the 
world  is  entirely  isolated  [here  come  the  categories  of  feeling: 
harmony,  beauty,  etc.];  thirdly,  that  which  changes  itself 
in  the  experience  must  still  present  an  identity  in  its  change 
by  showing  that  the  change  belongs  to  its  own  meaning  and 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  133 

is  only  its  own  realization  [the  categories  of  action,  life, 
morality]  "  (ibid.).  These  three  are  called  "  the  value  of 
conservation,  the  value  of  agreement,  the  value  of  realiza- 
tion. But  if  the  world  is  completely  to  assert  itself,  that  is, 
to  hold  its  own  identity,  these  three  values  must  ultimately 
be  identical  with  one  another,  one  must  realize  itself  in  the 
other.  Then  only  the  pure  will  gains  its  absolute  satisfac- 
tion; and  then  we  gain  the  fourth  value  of  completion  [the 
categories  uniting  the  world  in  one  whole,  i.  e.,  those  of 
religion  and  philosophy]  "  (ibid.).  But  now  each  of  these 
four  values  may  be  realized  naively  and  unconsciously,  or 
consciously  as  the  "  labour  of  civilization."  "  In  each  of 
these  two  large  groups,  the  life-values  and  the  culture- 
values,  we  then  have  the  four  heads  ..."  above  named 
(p.  80).  But  further,  each  of  these  eight  must  be  divided 
into  three,  "  inasmuch  as  experiences  which  are  to  assert 
themselves  can  belong  to  three  different  fields,  either  to  the 
experience  of  the  outer  world,  or  to  the  experience  of  our 
fellow  world,  or  to  the  experience  of  our  inner  world.  Hence 
we  have  a  system  of  eight  times  three  groups  of  values,  and 
yet  all  these  twenty-four  values  are  only  ramifications  of  the 
one  value  which  fulfills  our  will  that  our  experience  is  to 
belong  to  a  self-dependent,  self-asserting  (i.  e.,  real  and 
valuable)  world  "  (p.  80).  And  the  whole  world  is  here 
conceived,  not  as  a  finished  given  reality,  but  as  a  task  set 
to  the  mind,  a  creation  of  it,  not  arbitrary,  but  systematic 
and  planful.  "We  make  the  world "  (p.  81)  in  the  idealistic 
sense. 

The  first  group  of  values,  that  of  "  conservation"  contains 
the  categories  which  belong  to  recognizable  (because  rela- 
tively permanent  and  regular  in  their  behaviour)  objects. 
These  categories,  as  already  stated,  fall  into  two  groups: 
those  employed  by  common  life  and  those  employed  by  the 


134  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

conscious  endeavour  to  establish  identity-in-difference  be- 
yond the  region  of  superficial  observation.  This  last  sub- 
group comprises  the  field  of  science.  Then  each  of  these 
subgroups  contains  three  compartments:  identity-in- 
difference as  it  appears  in  external  nature,  as  it  appears  in 
the  social  world,  and  as  it  appears  in  the  inner  immediate 
life  of  the  private  self.  Hence  we  may  expect  six  categories 
under  the  heading  of  "  conservation."  These  are  called  by 
Miinsterberg  the  logical  values.  First,  in  the  ordinary  prac- 
tical dealing  with  reality,  identity-in-difference  gives  us  the 
real  object,  or  thing.  This  is  demanded :  something  which  is 
one  and  the  same  possible  object  for  every  possible  subject 
(p.  96).  In  the  social  world  —  which  is  found,  by  the  way, 
in  the  experience  of  will-attitudes,  my  will  meeting  other 
wills  directly  in  sympathy  or  antipathy,  agreement  or 
rejection  —  this  permanent-through-change  is  found  in  the 
concept  of  the  person.  The  person  is  a  will  which  takes  atti- 
tudes toward  different  objects;  it  continues  to  be  the  same 
will,  with  changing  attitudes  in  changing  circumstances. 
"  A  really  existing  person  must  have  the  possibility  of  main- 
taining himself  in  every  new  act  of  will  "  (p.  112).  In  the 
third  realm,  that  of  the  inner  life,  "  the  world  of  the  over- 
personal  will  "  (p.  113)  the  permanent  will-attitude  is  that 
which  wills  what  it  wills  because  that  alone  is  the  condition 
that  there  be  a  world  at  all.  This  is  nothing  else  but  the 
fact  that  there  is  value,  the  most  fundamental  category  of 
all;  most  fundamental,  because  all  the  world  and  all  that  is 
in  it,  is  value. 

The  development  which  these  three  categories  undergo 
when  they  are  posited  by  mind  in  thoroughgoing  fashion, 
carried  out  in  details  where  their  application  is  not  to  com- 
mon observation  immediately  evident,  gives  rise  to  the  cate- 
gories of  science,  history,  and  reason.  Of  science  the  chief 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  135 

category  is  causality;  which  means  identity  of  the  cause, 
preserved  in  the  effect.  In  the  field  of  social  life,  enduring 
identity  of  will  is  the  goal  sought  by  historical  science. 
"  The  task  of  the  historian  is  to  understand  the  subjects 
(persons)  in  such  a  way  that  a  closer  connection  of  all  beings 
by  identity  of  will  becomes  possible  "  (p.  141).  In  a  nation, 
for  instance,  all  the  members  of  that  nation  will  the  same 
thing  —  the  existence  of  that  particular  commonwealth. 
In  the  field  of  the  inner  life,  i.  e.,  of  the  values,  the  identity 
of  Ithe  four  kinds  of  value  is  posited.  For  all  four  proceed 
by  deduction  from  the  original  value  with  which  we  started, 
and  by  induction  from  all  four  we  reach  the  one  value  of 
which  they  are  the  species.  But  all  deduction  and  induction 
proceed  by  our  viewing  one  and  the  same  content  in  new 
ways  or  in  varying  situations.  And  the  same  holds  of  the 
more  particular  values  within  each  of  the  four  species,  as 
the  rest  of  the  book  aims  to  show. 

"  All  the  aesthetic  values  refer  to  the  self -agreement  of  the 
world  "  (p.  165).  That  is,  the  different  parts  are  in  har- 
mony. This  harmony,  perceived  merely  by  common  sense 
and  where  it  is  obvious,  he  calls  unity;  where  it  is  the  prod- 
uct of  conscious  elaboration,  it  is  the  beautiful  work  of  art. 
"  Our  thesis  is  that  whenever  in  our  experience  a  manifold- 
ness  of  wills  approaches  us,  their  agreement,  their  volition 
of  mutual  support,  is  to  us  absolutely  valuable  "  (p.  174). 
Here  things  are  seen  to  have  their  wills  —  "Is  this  will  of  the 
outer  world  real  ?  For  the  one  whose  soul  understands  it 
and  feels  it,  it  has  exactly  the  same  immediate  reality  which 
the  own  life-experience  may  have  "  (pp.  175-176);  though 
the  reality  is  not  objective  existence  as  of  motion  or  matter. 
This  agreement  as  found  in  Nature  is  harmony;  in  our  fel- 
lows, love  —  "  that  your  will  is  to  become  my  will  and  my 
will  your  will  "  (p.  189) ;  in  the  inner  life,  happiness.  Hap- 


136  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

piness  is  not  pleasure,  for  that  belongs  to  the  merely  in- 
dividual will;  it  is  the  harmony  of  one's  own  inner  life  as  a 
demand  of  the  universal  will;  "  the  height  of  completed 
unity  in  which  our  over-personal  self  finds  complete  satis- 
faction "  (p.  198).  The  harmony  or  agreement  in  the  world, 
found  as  the  result  of  trained  effort,  gives  beauty.  It  is  here 
not  agreement  with  our  own  will  —  which  would  give  to  the 
beautiful  an  existential  value  —  but  with  itself,  with  its 
elements  and  parts.  Hence  the  beautiful  object  must  be 
unreal;  ihe*work  of  art.  Art  as  concerned  with  the  subject- 
matter  of  external  Nature  is  called  Fine  Art;  with  our  fel- 
lows, literature;  with  the  inner  life,  music.  (We  neglect 
perforce  the  rich  suggestiveness  in  his  treatment  of  detail  — 
particularly  in  regard  to  music;  no  other  book  on  meta- 
physics that  we  know  has  so  fully  covered  the  aesthetic 
categories.) 

But  experience,  he  continues,  is  not  only  full  of  finished 
facts;  it  is  in  a  state  of  constant  becoming.  Hence  values 
also  take  on  the  form  of  ideals  to  be  striven  for.  To  the 
"  immediate  life-experience  "  these  are  the  kinds  of  "  de- 
velopment ";  their  later  stages  being  identical  with,  or  the 
fulfilment  of,  the  earlier.  Yet  more  than  the  category  of 
development  is  provided.  In  each  group,  we  must  remem- 
ber, there  are  two  subgroups.  The  values  of  this  group  will 
first  be  of  the  more  obvious  kind,  which  need  no  painstaking 
effort  for  their  realization;  secondly,  they  will  be  the  prod- 
uct of  civilization,  of  Kultur.  The  first  class  Miinsterberg 
calls  values  of  development;  in  the  second  class,  "  the  valu- 
able deed  may  subordinate  itself  to  a  conscious  purpose;  it 
then  becomes  an  achievement  "  (p.  257).  Hence  the  second 
class  is  called  "  values  of  achievement."  In  accordance 
with  the  general  plan,  we  find  that  the  values  of  develop- 
ment contain  three  members.  These  are  respectively  the 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  137 

forms  which  development  assumes  in  external  nature,  in  the 
social  world,  and  in  the  inner  life.  They  are:  in  nature, 
growth;  in  society,  progress;  in  the  inner  world,  self- 
development.  Growth  is  change  such  that  "  the  other  which 
comes  is  a  realization  of  the  first  which  has  gone  "  (p.  260) 
..."  the  flower  is  identical  with  that  which  the  seed-corn 
willed  "  (p.  261).  Progress  is  never  merely  the  establish- 
ment of  this  or  that  particular  institution,  but  the  "  transi- 
tion towards  a  standpoint  at  which  every  individual  wills  in 
accordance  with  the  over-personal  will,  that  is,  with  the 
pure  valuation.  Whatever  moves  toward  this  goal  is  pure 
progress;  whatever  moves  away  from  this  goal  is  regress  " 
(p.  288).  What  specific  forms  this  transition  takes  we  are 
not  told.  Self -development  is  that  development  in  which 
"  the  self  wills  to  develop  its  own  willing,  wills  to  unfold  and 
strengthen  its  own  volitions,  and  yet  always  remain  in  unity 
with  itself  "  (p.  296).  The  three  corresponding  values  when 
consciously  elaborated,  the  three  values  of  achievement,  are 
those  of  industry,  law,  and  morality.  Industry  is  nature  ful- 
filling its  task  (through  the  cooperation  of  man)  in  conserv- 
ing and  adding  to  the  values  of  life.  The  production, 
distribution,  and  consumption  of  material  goods  thus  take 
a  high  place  among  the  pure  values.  Not  because  they 
minister  to  our  comforts,  but  because  they  fulfill  the  poten- 
tialities of  Nature  itself,  do  they  attain  the  rank  of  over- 
personal  values.  (Is  this  not  a  slight  distortion  ?  Nature 
here  appears  not  so  much  to  be  fulfilling  its  own  potencies, 
as  to  be  transformed  by  an  external  agency,  man,  to  satisfy 
his  desires.  It  is  not  easy  to  see  in  industry  the  "  task  to 
awaken  the  slumbering  desire  in  the  outer  world,  to  lead 
nature's  faint  will  by  helpful  human  work  to  fuller  and 
fuller  success"  (pp.  311-312).  It  is  well-nigh  impossible 
to  regard  the  publishing,  advertising  and  selling  of  a  new 


138  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

dictionary  as  such  an  affair.)  The  second  value  of  achieve- 
ment, whereby  the  community  consciously  realizes  itself,  is 
"  law  and  the  state  as  far  as  it  serves  the  law  "  (p.  317). 
"  The  content  of  that  common  will,  on  the  other  hand,  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  value  of  the  law  as  such  "  (p.  326). 
The  third  value  of  achievement,  morality,  is  conscious,  in- 
tentional self-realization.  Here  as  with  law,  the  content  of 
the  act  is  indifferent.  "  Every  ethics  which  deals  with  re- 
sults and  effects  necessarily  remains  at  the  standpoint  of  the 
pre-moral  "  (p.  333).  When  we  speak  the  truth  or  save 
a  life,  as  true  moral  agents,  "  We  will  ourselves  as  truth- 
speakers  or  as  life-savers  only  on  account  of  the  action  itself, 
not  on  account  of  the  desirable  results.  When  the  self  which 
is  willed  in  such  a  way  becomes  realized,  a  pure  over-personal 
demand  is  fulfilled  "  (p.  337). 

These  various  threads  are  brought  together  in  the  final 
series  of  values.  This  series  contains  two  groups;  religion 
and  philosophy.  Religion  sees,  in  immediate  fashion,  the 
unity  of  all  the  values  in  God;  philosophy  consciously 
elaborates  this,  proves  it,  finds  their  only  source  in  a  one 
Over-self,  or  absolute  will.  This  will  is,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  the/ows  et  origo  of  outer  world,  with  its  multiplicity  of 
objects,  of  the  fellow-world  and  of  the  many  inner  lives. 
From  it  they  are  deduced. 

How  shall  we  estimate  this  most  stupendous  of  idealism's 
deductions  ?  It  gives  indeed  a  rich  haul  of  categories. 
Besides  the  initial  state,  containing  space,  time,  and  the 
three  sorts  of  world,  we  have:  thing,  person,  value  [sic], 
causality,  history,  systematic  reason,  harmony,  love,  happi- 
ness, beauty  in  fine  art,  in  literature,  and  in  music,  growth 
(of  living  things),  progress  (of  mankind),  self-realization  or 
morality,  industry,  law  and  the  State,  religion.  Perhaps 
these  overlap  a  bit,  perhaps  they  are  not  all  of  the  categories 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  139 

of  experience.  But  the  achievement  of  idealism  seems 
superb.  It  shows  that  a  Great  Will  which  regards  a  world 
like  our  own  as  object  of  its  will,  and  as  itself  will,  somehow 
obtains  all  these  categories.  It  is  of  course  much  to  know 
this.  But  much  in  what  way  ?  The  character  of  the  knowl- 
edge must  not  be  overrated.  Is  the  information  which  is 
vouchsafed,  truly  drawn  from  the  initial  will-attitude  ? 

The  will  and  its  satisfaction  are  really  two  distinct  mat- 
ters. The  former  does  not  generate  the  latter.  The  world 
may  be  defined  as  object  of  my  will-to-attend ;  but  that  will 
does  not  decide  what  attention  shall  find.  There  must  be 
things,  yes;  but  what  things  ?  Why  grass  and  flowers, 
water  and  air  ?  There  must  be  persons,  but  of  what  sort  ? 
Why  stupid,  or  tender,  or  brilliant  ?  There  will  be  causal 
connections,  but  why  may  not  anything  cause  anything 
else  ?  There  will  be  music,  but  why  not  of  smells  rather 
than  of  sounds  ?  It  is  the  old  difficulty,  found  in  all  tran- 
scendentalism from  Plato  down,  of  accounting  for  the  par- 
ticular from  the  universal  alone.  But  that  reality  which  it 
is  philosophy's  purpose  to  map  contains  particulars  as  well 
as  universals — even  if  it  contains  them  only  under  the  guise 
of  appearance  or  unreality  —  and  the  Great  Self,  in  failing 
to  account  for  the  particulars,  has  to  that  extent  met  its 
critical  point.  It  cannot  suffice  as  a  basis  for  a  satisfactory 
philosophical  system.  Notwithstanding  the  tremendous 
impression  created  by  this  vast  system  of  categories,  we 
cannot  forget  that  all  the  categories  are  ideals,  indifferent 
to  their  application,  not  explaining  their  particular  dress  on 
particular  occasions  —  in  short,  so  far  divorced  from  the 
reality.  We  must  even  go  further.  Not  only  do  the  cate- 
gories fail  to  account  for  the  particulars;  the  Great  Will 
does  not  account  for  the  categories.  Miinsterberg  would 
never  get  those  2X3X4  divisions  from  the  one  notion  of  a 


140  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

will  willing  its  own  willing  and  finding  its  satisfaction.  Such 
willing  and  satisfaction  we  are  perfectly  ready  to  grant — as 
shall  later  be  duly  acknowledged  —  but  they  start  no  fertile 
process;  from  them  emanates  nothing.  Why  should  there 
be  the  three  worlds  of  self,  fellows,  and  the  inner  life  ?  Why 
the  immediate  value  and  the  consciously  elaborated  value  ? 
Why  the  "  starting  point,  the  striving,  and  the  goal  "  ?  We 
simply  find  these  subdivisions  of  our  life,  in  experience. 
Are  we  answered  that  idealism  does  not  pretend  to  deduce 
a  priori  all  these  primitive  elements  ?  Then,  we  reply, 
idealism  does  not  justify  itself;  for  its  claim  to  our  accept- 
ance was  to  be  based  upon  the  fertility  of  the  Great  Will  in 
accounting  for  the  make-up  of  the  world.  Let  voluntarism 
condemn  the  static  Reason  of  the  rationalists  as  it  may,  the 
dynamic  Thdtigkeit  of  the  Will  accomplishes  but  little  more. 
It  looked  more  promising,  because  it  connoted  movement 
and  life;  but  it  does  not  fulfill  the  promise.  All  along  the 
line  we  find  this  inability  of  the  monarch  Will  to  guarantee 
the  performance  of  his  commands:  the  irony  cannot  but 
strike  us,  of  a  will  which  is  powerless  to  execute.  And  this 
is  but  the  same  indifference  of  form  to  content,  as  we  found 
in  the  rationalist  Natorp.  It  was  shown  by  the  Kantian 
prototype,  and  how  should  the  children  not  inherit  the 
paternal  traits  ?  Kant  never  claimed  to  account  by  his 
transcendental  formula  for  the  detail  of  the  world,  either  in 
the  scientific  or  the  moral  domain.  How  from  the  precept  of 
right  for  right's  sake  could  we  drive  the  maxim  of  honesty  ? 
Kant  did  so,  avowedly,  only  by  appealing  to  the  empirically 
taught  lesson  of  life,  that  society  perishes  without  mutual 
confidence.  And  this  indifference  is  no  accidental  incom- 
pleteness of  Great  Subjectivism,  but  is  ingrained  in  the 
Great  Subject.  He  does  not  originate  any  distinctions.  His 
will  is  not  productive  of  its  end :  it  is  simply  so  defined  at 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  141 

the  beginning  as  to  include  it.  In  fact,  the  very  nature  of  the 
will-concept  used  by  Miinsterberg  and  other  voluntarists 
rules  out  productiveness;  for  their  will  has  no  causal  ef- 
ficacy. Causality  is  but  a  minor  aspect  of  the  world;  a 
relation  which  the  contents  of  the  will-world  display  toward 
one  another;  this  single  instance  of  effectiveness,  which  it 
would  seem  the  idealists  ought  above  all  to  profit  by,  in  their 
attempt  to  show  how  the  Great  Self  rules  over  his  world,  is 
thrown  aside.  Royce,  for  example,  says  (World  and  Indi- 
vidual, vol.  I,  p.  326)  "  I  speak  not  here  of  will  as  of  any 
causally  efficacious  entity  whatever."  Can  we  then  expect 
this  emasculated  being,  this  Great  Eunuch,  to  generate 
anything,  to  account  for  anything,  even  the  thinnest  of 
categories,  outside  his  own  self  ?  We  cannot;  and  hereby 
voluntaristic  idealism  is  convicted  of  a  formality  as  vicious, 
though  not  as  extensive,  as  that  of  subjectivism. 

And  by  the  same  token,  voluntarism  fails  to  satisfy  the 
practical  needs,  and  the  emotional  cravings,  which  it  was 
especially  designed  to  meet.  Of  what  use  to  call  the  world 
valuable,  when  the  value  of  it  is  quite  disconnected  with  all 
that  makes  values  good  ?  The  result  is  secured,  not  by 
showing  that  the  world  contains  what  we  want,  but  by  rede- 
fining value.  The  kind  of  value  which  all  facts  have,  merely 
because  they  are  facts,  is  not  a  kind  from  which  any  signifi- 
cance of  those  facts  for  our  future  destiny  or  for  the  coloured 
detail  of  reality  can  be  traced.  The  kind  of  knowledge  we 
get,  when  we  know  that  the  world  is  object  of  an  Over- 
individual  Will,  is  not  such  as  to  afford  us  any  guidance  in 
our  conduct  of  life,  or  any  explanation  of  the  world's  con- 
tents. Once  more,  the  original  philosophical  problem  has 
been  forgotten.  In  our  eagerness  for  a  map  of  the  universe, 
we  have  with  rule  and  compass  marked  out  a  beautiful 
figure  with  twenty-four  compartments,  radiating  from  an 


142  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

empty  circle  in  the  centre.  A  certain  pleasure  there  may  be 
in  gazing  at  this  work  of  art ;  but  it  fulfills  no  lofty  motive, 
and  detracts  rather  from  our  ability  to  adapt  ourselves  to 
the  particular  traits  of  our  environment.  The  immortality 
of  a  timeless  attitude  may  be  possessed  by  everybody,  but 
it  is  of  the  least  possible  interest  and  significance;  the 
Great  Will  may  be  a  fact,  but  He  will  do  whatever  the  blind 
forces  of  nature  or  our  own  free  choices  make  Him  do,  and 
He  can  command  little  reverence  from  us  mortals.  The 
Great  Will  is  as  barren  as  the  Great  Reason. 

As  regards  barrenness,  it  must  be  admitted  that  idealists 
have  felt  the  accusation  and  honestly  endeavoured  to  meet 
it.  Thus  Royce:  "  I  have  tried  to  show  that  the  idealist  is 
not  obliged  either  to  ignore  or  to  make  light  of  physical 
facts  "  (World  and  Individual,  vol.  II,  Pref.,  pp.  x-xi).  But 
neither  he  nor,  so  far  as  we  know,  any  other  idealist  makes 
definite  connection  of  those  facts  with  the  Great  Self.  Be 
the  values  and  the  scientific  categories  which  this  Being  wills 
or  sees  what  they  may,  they  do  not  tell  us  why  bodies  gravi- 
tate, why  entropy  increases,  why  men  love  women.  Nor  do 
idealists  on  the  other  hand  employ  very  significant  char- 
acteristics of  our  universe  in  their  delineation  of  the  Self. 
Of  course  idealism  must  respect  the  positive  contents  of  the 
world  as  they  pass  before  us  in  experience,  for  that  system 
needs  them  to  fill  in  the  blank  forms  it  offers.  But  beyond 
stating  this  general  need  of  the  particulars,  it  has  naught  to 
say.  Remember  the  criticism  which  idealism  used  to  make, 
when  it  was  winning  its  way  to  the  front,  upon  the  older 
empiricism.  No  amount  of  summing  up  of  particulars  will 
prove  a  necessary  law,  we  were  told.  True,  of  course. 
Idealism  has  never  been  able  to  see  the  equally  true  con- 
verse. No  amount  of  a  priori  necessities,  however  real  or 
valid  they  may  be,  will  account  for  the  existence  and  the 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  143 

specialty  of  a  single  instance.  For  this  Aristotle  criticized 
Plato;  but  idealism  has  forgotten  the  lesson.  Kant  himself , 
even,  knew  that  the  particular  was  a  surd  to  the  universal. 
Perhaps  we  should  not  blame  idealism  more  than  any  other 
system  for  failing  to  deduce  one  from  the  other;  for  no  sys- 
tem has  yet  done  this.  We  ourselves  shall  later  endeavour 
to  do  so,  because  we  believe  that  until  it  is  done,  civil  war 
in  philosophy's  camp  is  inevitable.  But  we  need  not  re- 
quire even  so  much  of  idealism.  It  should  at  least,  if  it  is 
fertile,  proceed  from  genus  to  species,  in  ever  increasing  con- 
notation, until  it  comes  at  any  rate  close  to  our  particulars. 
It  need  not  reach  them.  But  at  present,  even  in  Miinster- 
berg's  elaborate  product,  it  remains  quite  bare  of  character 
and  of  determination.  The  universal  we  found  able  to  gen- 
erate many  categories;  Mind  and  the  Great  Will  were  able 
to  generate  little  or  nothing.  How  much  Professor  Miinster- 
berg  had  to  assume  at  the  outset,  and  how  empirically  did 
he  obtain  it!  Yet  despite  the  extraordinary  interest  of  his 
detailed  account  of  the  categories,  we  must  confess  that  it  is 
not  as  the  work  of  a  Great  Subject,  that  it  is  interesting. 

Against  our  criticism  it  may  be  objected  that  we  have 
failed  to  get  the  point  of  view  of  voluntarism.  Our  judg- 
ment has  been  couched,  we  may  be  told,  in  static,  logical,  or 
existential  terms :  but  volition  is  a  Thathandlung,  as  Fichte 
said.  Or  as  Miinsterberg  and  others  put  it,  existence  is  a 
value.  Perhaps  the  deductive  point  of  view  which  we  have 
maintained  misses  this  value-side. 

Now  we  do  not  here  raise  the  whole  question  of  the  mean- 
ing of  value.  We  are  discussing  idealism,  and  consequently 
we  are  concerned  only  with  value  in  the  personal  sense :  — 
value  as  a  category  of  consciousness.  Some  thinkers  have 
maintained  that  good  and  bad  may  reside  in  objects  by 
themselves ;  that,  if  there  were  no  men  living,  to  a  flower  the 


144  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

sun  would  be  a  good.  Such  a  view  seems  antagonistic  to 
common  sense :  but  it  matters  not  to  us  now,  whether  it  is 
right  or  wrong.  Even  if  we  admit  that  value  is  dependent 
upon  a  subject  and  is  indefinable  —  that  "  there  is  nothing 
good  or  bad  in  the  world  but  thinking  makes  it  so  "  -  what 
we  shall  say  retains  its  force. 

Should  the  value-attitude,  then,  replace  the  scientific  or 
theoretical  one  ?  Do  we  get  a  better  understanding  of  the 
world  when  we  put  it  all  into  terms  of  willed  end,  frustrated 
or  fulfilled  purpose,  yes,  even  an  impersonal  Sollen  ?  We 
may  indeed  do  this.  To  be  a  blade  of  grass  is  doubtless  to  be 
an  object  which  fulfills  my  purpose  of  finding  out  what  com- 
poses the  lawn  in  front  of  my  house.  It  is,  however,  just  as 
correct  to  say  that  the  satisfaction  thus  afforded  to  my 
curiosity  is  an  existing  fact,  a  real  occurrence.  The  reduc- 
tion of  existence  to  value  does  not  forestall  the  converse 
reduction.  If  reality  is  what  we  ought  to  believe,  then  what 
we  ought  to  believe  is  reality,  and  the  fact  that  we  ought  to 
believe  it  is  a  real  attribute  of  the  universe.  The  only 
justification  for  our  preferring  either  reduction  lies  in  its 
fertility.  Does  it  help  us  to  see  more  of  the  make-up  of  the 
universe,  to  regard  it  in  value-terms  rather  than  in  the  cold 
impersonal  way  of  the  rationalist  ?  And  we  have  found  that 
it  does  not.  The  value-attitude,  however  interesting  an 
object  of  study  for  itself,  has  not  cast  more  light  upon  the 
scene  before  us,  than  the  contemplative  one.  It  gives  a  cor- 
rect, though  inadequate,  formulation  of  the  panorama;  so 
does  the  existential  rendering.  As  far  as  results  go,  there 
is  no  ground  for  asserting  the  primacy  of  either  value  or 
fact. 

A  third  sort  of  idealism  remains  to  be  considered.  As  the 
human  person  has  been  thought  to  have  three  "  faculties," 
viz.,  intellect,  will,  and  feeling  —  the  modern  fashion  pre- 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  145 

fers  the  word  "  processes  "  or  "  functions  "  —  so  the  Great 
Self  has  been  alleged  to  be  Reason,  or  Will,  or  Feeling. 
Having  expounded  the  performances  of  the  Great  Reason 
and  the  Great  Will,  we  ought  now  to  set  forth  the  system  of 
aesthetic  idealism  or  the  doctrine  of  the  Great  Feeling.  This 
system  has  not  indeed  been  so  prominent  as  the  other  two. 
Shall  we  be  wrong  if  we  assign  as  the  reason  the  predom- 
inantly practical  and  scientific  colour  of  modern  civilization? 
The  ideas  of  the  Romantic  School,  and  the  philosophy  of 
Schelling,  could  hardly  flourish  long  in  a  scientific  and  indus- 
trial epoch.  Nevertheless,  we  have  today  a  reappearance 
of  this  affective  idealism,  as  we  might  call  it,  and  in  a  more 
thoroughly  organized  form  than  Schelling  was  able  to  give  it. 
We  refer  to  the  system  of  Professor  Baldwin.  This  magnum 
opus,  begun  in  the  three  volumes  of  Thought  and  Things  and 
culminating  in  the  Genetic  Theory  of  Reality,  could  hardly  be 
expected  to  receive  its  meed  of  attention  and  appreciation 
so  soon  after  its  birth  (1905-15)  as  the  present  date;  but  it 
would  seem  to  represent  along  with  the  above  systems  one  of 
the  chief  types  of  human  thought.  Let  us  then  expound  it 
and  estimate  its  metaphysical  significance. 

The  author  thus  resumes  his  position:  "It  remains, 
finally,  to  characterize  our  result  from  the  historical  point  of 
view.  We  have  seen  that  the  interpretations  of  reality,  since 
the  introduction  of  the  subjective  point  of  view  into  modern 
philosophy,  have  vibrated  between  various  rationalisms  and 
various  voluntarisms,  apart  from  tendencies  of  a  '  positive ' 
character,  which  have  recognized  certain  limitations  of 
method  and  so  have  denied  the  possibility  of  a  philosophy 
of  reality.  In  speculative  thought  systems  of  rationalism 
and  voluntarism  have  contested  the  field. 

"  A  third  point  of  view,  making  appeal  to  feeling,  has  per- 
sisted, however,  more  or  less  desultorily,  its  presentation 


146  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

growing  more  and  more  articulate.  Its  clear  formulation  is 
today  most  urgently  needed."  (Genetic  Theory  of  Reality, 
pp.  308-309.) 

Such  a  formulation  is  his  own  system,  the  metaphysical 
theory  of  "  Pancalism  "  or  the  beautiful  whole  (rb  KO\OV  TTO.V). 
The  title  sufficiently  indicates  the  aesthetic  trend  of  the  doc- 
trine. The  interpretation  of  reality,  now  in  one  way,  now 
in  another,  by  individual  and  race,  reaches  its  goal  in  a  con- 
ception which  synthesizes  the  positive  elements  of  previous 
views:  that  of  aesthetic  experience.  Such  experience,  and 
such  alone,  is  ultimate  reality.  In  order  to  appreciate  it,  we 
must  consider  how  it  has  evolved  from  earlier  modes  of 
thought.  The  development  of  human  thinking  about 
reality  has  passed,  according  to  Baldwin,  through  three 
stages,  viz.,  the  prelogical,  logical,  and  hyperlogical. 
Though  not  strictly  necessary  to  our  purpose,  we  believe 
it  will  conduce  to  a  better  realization  of  the  system's  im- 
portance if  we  recount  some  of  the  details  of  this  progress. 
In  the  prelogical  stage  reality  is,  to  man,  a  social  institu- 
tion. The  tribe,  not  the  individual,  is  the  primary  thing; 
the  individual  is  not,  except  as  a  member  of  the  tribe.  What- 
ever the  tribe  endorses  is  real,  and  whatever  is  real  is  what 
the  tribe  endorses.  "  If  this  be  true,  we  should  expect,  the 
farther  back  we  trace  human  culture,  the  more  emphatic, 
dominant,  and  irresistible  we  should  find  the  social  means  of 
organization  and  control  to  be.  .  .  .  We  are  accustomed  to 
think  of  the  '  natural  man  '  as  a  sort  of  primitive  '  in- 
dividualist/ free  from  our  social  conventions,  and  roaming 
at  his  own  sweet  will  in  the  broad  fields  of  life.  But  the 
very  reverse  is  the  case.  Primitive  man  is  a  slave,  subject  to 
unheard-of  severities,  brutalities,  terrors,  sanctions,  per- 
secutions, all  represented  by  detailed  rites  and  ceremonies 
that  make  his  life  a  perpetual  shiver  of  dread,  and  a  night- 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  147 

mare  full  of  spectres.  Nothing  is  so  slight,  not  even  his 
shadow  or  his  dream,  as  to  escape  the  regulation  of  the 
mystic  powers,  speaking  in  the  social  code ;  and  nothing  is 
grave  enough  to  secure  him  a  moment's  respite  or  exemption 
from  the  penalties  socially  decreed.  The  savage  is  never 
gay;  gayety  is  the  product  of  civilization  "  (p.  46).  "  We 
may  say,  without  hesitation,  that  primitive  interpretation 
(of  reality)  considered  as  common  meaning  or  representation 
collective,  is  '  syndoxic  ' :  that  is,  it  is  apprehended  by  the 
individual  as  being  the  common  possession  of  the  group, 
accepted  by  others  as  by  himself.  He  makes  no  claim  to 
have  discovered  or  even  to  have  confirmed  it.  It  is  a  body 
of  commonly  accepted  teachings  ..."  (p.  46).  This 
interpretation  of  reality  is  not  dualistic:  self  and  other,  sub- 
ject and  object,  actual  and  ideal,  are  not  yet  distinguished. 
It  confuses  the  two  sides;  facts  are  not,  as  we  now  view 
them,  physical  facts  merely,  but  emotionally  interpreted 
physical  facts.  "  It  is  as  in  the  case  of  the  child  who  refuses 
to  admit  that  the  doll  is  merely  a  thing  of  wood  and  paint, 
seeing  in  it  the  identity  of  a  loved  and  cherished  compan- 
ion "  (p.  56).  There  is  lacking  "  the  distinction  of  persons 
from  things,  and  the  distinction  of  persons  as  individuals, 
from  one  another  —  especially  of  the  personal  self  from 
other  selves,  of  ego  from  alter  "  (p.  59).  "  This  appears  in 
the  mass  of  evidence  collected  by  the  ethnologists,  which 
shows  that  the  primitive  individual  does  not  and  cannot 
consider  himself,  even  physically,  a  separate,  distinct,  self- 
identical  being  "  (p.  62).  This  primitive  monism  is  signifi- 
cant, for  to  it  we  return  at  the  end,  though  in  an  enriched 
and  ripened  form,  which  has  profited  by  the  dualism  of  the 
later  stages.  And  finally,  we  note  that  it  is  a  religious  inter- 
pretation; the  physical  object  is  identified  with  its  mystical 
meaning.  "...  the  animism  of  primitive  life  is  that  of  the 


148  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

affective  type  "  (p.  79).  "...  things  are  intermediaries, 
agents,  instruments  of  good  or  ill,  of  fate  or  fortune,  or  they 
are  ends,  beings  to  be  propitiated,  avoided,  welcomed,  ap- 
pealed to,  defended.  In  both  cases  they  are  values  "  (p.  81). 
This  is  a  religious  attitude,  because  "  there  is  the  recognition 
in  this  object  of  a  presence  or  force  worthy  of  respect  and 
capable  of  giving  aid  "  (p.  88).  It  is  a  personal  affair,  for 
"  All  the  great  religions  of  the  world  have  personal  gods  " 
(p.  93).  To  this  religious  and  affective  character  of  reality, 
so  prominent  in  the  view  of  primitive  man,  we  return  in  the 
theory  of  "  Pancalism." 

"  In  the  passage  from  the  prelogical  to  the  logical  type  of 
knowledge,  the  imagination  is  the  constant  instrument.  .  .  . 
By  the  schematizing  imagination,  the  materials  of  knowl- 
edge are  released  from  the  grasp  of  external  and  social  con- 
trol, and  made  available  for  reconstruction  in  experimental 
hypotheses  and  aesthetic  unities  "  (p.  140).    With  increased 
play  of  fancy,  grows  up  the  pure  contemplative  impulse,  the 
impulse  "  toward  the  explanation  of  things,  in  the  whole 
range  of  nature  and  mind  "  (p.  142).    But  we  must  not 
believe  that  the  scientific  method  which  follows  is  the  only 
organon  of  truth.    It  is  but  one  among  others;  to  select  it 
out  as  alone  worthy  of  respect  is  to  worship  an  abstraction. 
Fancy,  too,  has  its  insights;  myths  have  their  truth- value. 
"  It  is  not  only  true  that  the  imagination  serves  as  an  in- 
strument to  knowledge  .  .  .  ,  it  is  equally  true  that  its. 
constructions  may  not  have  such  ends  in  view,  but  may  con- 
stitute a  mode  of  interpretation  having  independent  mean- 
ing "  (p.  144).     "  And  this  semblant  picture  [drawn  by 
religious  myth],  presented  to  faith  and  contemplation,  is  not 
merely  a  temporary  substitute  for  a  fully  rational  account; 
it  is  a  permanent  rendering  of  ideals  in  forms  with  which  the 
logical  dispenses,  but  which  nevertheless  hold  their  own  in 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  149 

human  thought  "  (p.  145).    After  these  warnings,  we  may 
proceed  with  the  logical  stages.    Imagination  soon  reveals 
the  dualism  of  fact  and  value ;  and  hence  reality  is  seen  in 
either  of  two  guises.    It  may  be  viewed  as  a  group  of  "  facts, 
truths,  principles  "  or  a  group  of  "  ends,  values,  norms  " 
(cf.  the  table,  p.  151).    These  give  respectively  rationalisms 
and  voluntarisms.    We  must  admit  that  Professor  Baldwin 
here  rather  lightly  brushes  aside  the  "  realistic  "  types  of 
thought,  as  if  the  idealisms  (rationalistic  or  voluntaristic) 
were  the  only  ones  worth  considering.    He  says,  "  It  would 
seem,  then,  that,  historically  considered,  speculative  thought 
has  allowed,  tacitly  or  avowedly,  the  presupposition  that  it 
is  in  a  mode  of  experience,  or  through  consciousness,  that 
reality  reveals  itself.    We  may  say  that  this  is  true  without 
doubt.     The  subjective  point  of  view  .  .  .  has  remained 
the  starting  point  of  the  theory  of  reality,  as  it  is  the  pre- 
supposition of  the  judgment  of  existence.    A  theory  may 
refuse  to  admit  this  .  .  .  but  in  that  case  it  must  still 
postulate  a  principle  .  .  .  the  meaning  of  which  can  be 
determined  only  in  human  experience  "  (ibid.).    It  is  a  con- 
sequence of  his  inadequate  treatment  of  this  issue  —  surely 
as  patently  unsolved  today  as  any  in  philosophy  —  that  his 
final  synthesis  includes  only  idealistic  motives,  and  in  so  far 
fails  to  be  as  complete  a  philosophical  synthesis  as  the 
author  believes  it  is.    But  —  to  proceed.    Both  intellec- 
tualism   (rationalism)   and  voluntarism  are  convicted  of 
one-sidedness,  in  twenty  pages  of  searching  analysis.    We 
give  two  examples :  "  Every  experience  of  exclusive  interest, 
-  the  child's  kiss,  the  drunkard's  cup,  the  image  present  to 
the  gaze  of  the  devotee  —  gives  a  sense  of  reality  more 
intimate  than  all  the  proofs  of  logic  "  (p.  156).    "...  all 
the  ideals  (of  voluntarism)  become  intelligible,  continuous, 
and  coordinated  goods  only  by  reason  of  the  function  of 


150  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

knowledge,  which  not  only  discovers  the  ideals,  but  enforces 
them  by  finding  them  true  "  (p.  169). 

Having  thus  escaped  from  the  exclusions  of  the  logical 
period,  we  pass  to  the  hyperlogical.  Here  we  find  the 
beginnings  of  the  attempt  to  synthesize  the  various  opposing 
views  of  the  logical  period.  They  are  indeed  hardly  at  all 
synthetic  at  first;  rather  a  return  from  the  oppositions  of 
that  period  to  the  directness  and  simplicity  of  immediacy. 
They  are,  therefore,  called  "  immediacy  theories  ";  of  the 
more  primitive  type,  there  are  mysticism  of  the  naive  sort, 
and  subjectivism;  of  the  more  sophisticated  kind,  intuition- 
ism,  transcendentalism  and  the  "  higher  mysticism."  The 
second  group  of  hyperlogical  theories  contains  "those  based 
on  the  immediacy  of  synthesis  ":  i.  e.,  those  which  make 
a  more  serious  attempt  to  combine  opposing  motives  in  the 
history  of  thought.  Here  are  grouped  —  perhaps  rather 
arbitrarily  —  such  different  men  as  Plotinus,  Fichte,  Hegel, 
Bradley,  Plato,  Jacobi,  and  at  the  highest  point  of  the 
progress,  Aristotle,  Kant,  and  Schelling.  The  relationship 
of  our  author's  view  to  that  of  Schelling  is,  as  we  should 
expect,  close;  and  one  is  glad  to  see  the  merit  of  Schelling, 
too  long  obscured  by  his  great  contemporary  Hegel,  receiv- 
ing something  of  its  due  recognition.  The  one  trouble  with 
Schelling  was  that  in  his  system  "  The  art  consciousness  is 
not  shown  to  have  the  requisite  content  "  (p.  214,  italics 
mine).  "  What  Schelling's  resort  to  the  aesthetic  really 
lacked,  then,  was  an  analysis  of  the  art  consciousness  and 
its  products,  which  would  show  that  it  really  fulfilled  the 
role  of  reconciliation  which  he  assigned  to  it  "  (p.  215). 

The  synthesis  of  "  Pancalism  "  follows.  "  The  aesthetic 
experience  is  so  rich  in  meaning  that  we  are  able  to  recog- 
nize no  less  than  four  suggestions  of  dualistic  meaning 
[taken  up  from  the  logical  stage]  whenever  it  is  experienced, 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  151 

each  contributing,  however,  to  the  immediacy  of  the  whole 
effect.    There  is,  in  the  aesthetic  object,  first,  the  character 
of  imaginative  semblance,  which  suggests   the  ordinary 
dualism  between  idea  and  fact;  there  is,  second,  the  char- 
acter of  idealization,  which  suggests  the  dualism  between 
fact  and  end;  there  is,  third,  the  character  of  self -embodi- 
ment or  personalization,  suggesting  the  dualism  between  the 
self  and  the  not-self;  and  finally,  fourth,  there  is  the  char- 
acter of  singularity,  suggesting  the  dualism  between  singular 
and  universal.    It  remains  to  show,  however,  that    .  .  . 
these  strains  of  dualism  lose  themselves  in  the  rich  synthesis 
of  immediate  contemplation.    With  all  its  varied  sugges- 
tions, no  state  of  mind  is  more  fully  one  and  undivided  than 
that  of  aesthetic  enjoyment,  when  once  it  is  fully  entered 
into  "    (pp.    231-232).      "  The   distinguishing   thing  .  .  . 
about  the  aesthetic  interest  is  its  end ;  it  seeks  the  intrinsic 
meaning  of  the  object,  not  a  meaning  foreign  to  or  beyond 
the  object  "  (p.  236).    It  seeks  and  finds  the  reality  itself. 
"In  aesthetic  appreciation,  the  object  is  read  as  possessed 
of  the  very  mental  and  moral  life  of  the  observer  ..." 
(p.  239).    "What  we  are  justified  in  taking  the  real  to  be  is 
that  with  which  the  full  and  free  aesthetic  and  artistic  con- 
sciousness finds  itself  satisfied.   We  realize  the  real  in  achieving 
and  enjoying  the  beautiful  "  (p.  277).    "  The  conclusions  we 
have  reached  allow  us  to  suppose  that  reality  is  just  all  the 
contents  of  consciousness  so  far  as  organized  or  capable  of 
organization  in  aesthetic  or  artistic  form.  .  .  .    The  whole 
of  reality  would  be  the  entire  experience  of  a  consciousness 
capable  of  grasping  and  contemplating  it  as  an  aesthetic 
whole.     The  whole  is  an  organized  experience,  and  this 
experience  has  the  form  of  a  self  "  (p.  303).   This  is  aesthetic 
idealism.     It  differs  from  absolute  idealism  such  as  Mr. 
Bradley's  in  this,  that  it  does  not  construe  the  partial  aspects 


152  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

as  appearance  over  against  reality.  "As  to  these  special 
modes  of  reality,  they  are  not  to  be  considered  invalid  or 
unreal.  .  .  .  The  aesthetic  reveals  something  new,  some- 
thing peculiar;  but  it  accepts  and  reinstates,  in  its  own  way, 
the  realities  and  even  the  contrasts  of  the  partial  modes.  .  .  . 
Each  is  therefore  a  valid,  though,  genetically  considered,  a 
modal  and  incomplete  aspect  of  the  real  "  (p.  304).  Nor  is 
this  aesthetic  whole  a  "  static  absolute."  "It  is  just  the 
quality  of  the  aesthetic  ideal  to  reach  finality  in  every  state- 
ment of  its  results;  but  to  say  that  reality  is  itself  finished, 
in  this  intent  of  finality,  is  to  deny  the  continued  efficacy  of 
the  motives  themselves  upon  which  this  very  intent  is 
based  "  (p.  305).  "...  the  whole  is  continually  and 
progressively  moving  on  ..."  (ibid.). 

Professor  Baldwin's  achievement  is,  we  believe,  unique. 
He  has  the  breadth  of  motive  of  the  true  philosopher.  On 
the  idealistic  side,  he  has  gathered  up  the  partial  views  into 
a  synthesis  which  adds  to  the  merit  of  comprehensiveness 
that  of  a  specific  verification  in  experience  which  rationalistic 
and  voluntaristic  idealism  have  seemed  unable  to  attain. 
And  he  has  raised  into  prominence  an  invaluable  human 
experience  —  the  aesthetic  —  whose  significance  for  knowl- 
edge the  modern  workaday  consciousness  is  all  too  inclined 
to  overlook. 

How  then  shall  we  adjudicate  the  metaphysical  claims  of 
the  system  ?  Professor  Baldwin's  method  is  genetic;  and 
this  means  that  he  does  not  attempt  to  deduce  from  the 
Great  Esthete's  experience  the  various  parts  and  the  de- 
tailed outline  of  the  universe.  Such  a  Being  is  conceived  as 
the  goal  toward  which  we  human  beings  are  progressing, 
which  indeed  some  of  us  occasionally  touch.  We  believe  the 
conception  to  be  a  just  one.  If,  however,  that  is  the  goal,  we 
have  yet  to  understand  how  it  happens  to  realize  itself  so 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  153 

gradually,  through  partial  stages,  one  at  a  time,  each  suffer- 
ing from  the  exclusions  and  bitter  oppositions  found  in 
human  history.  This  is  always  the  difficulty  for  an  idealiz- 
ing view,  as  for  a  synthetic  view;  granted  its  truth,  does  it 
account  for  the  happenings  of  this  nether  world,  with  its 
imperfections  which  cannot  be  explained  away  ?  It  maps 
the  better  side  of  reality,  if  you  will ;  but  the  worse  side  — 
the  side,  that  is,  to  which  we  most  need  to  adapt  ourselves  — 
is  not  understood.  The  value  of  a  philosophical  system, 
i.  e.,  the  extent  to  which  it  satisfies  our  instinctive  curiosity 
to  know  the  universe  and  to  adapt  ourselves  to  it,  is  meas- 
ured by  its  power  of  explaining  just  those  characters  of  the 
universe  which  offer  difficulty  to  us:  the  particular  things, 
the  forces  that  frustrate  one  another,  the  real  as  opposed  to 
the  ideal.  The  aesthetic  system  is  too  good  to  be  wholly  sat- 
isfactory,  just  as  the  rationalistic  was  too  logical  to  be  wholly 
true.  A  perfectly  correct  picture  of  one  side  it  certainly 
gives.  The  aesthetic  experience  "  when  once  it  is  fully 
entered  into  "  (p.  232),  has  all  the  soul-satisfying  qualities 
attributed  to  it  by  our  author.  At  the  same  time  it  is  but 
one  point  of  view  of  the  universe,  even  though  it  were  the 
broadest  possible.  It  may  include  everything  in  its  net, 
just  as  subjectivism  did ;  but  it  finds  a  surd  in  the  other  all- 
inclusive  points  of  view  already  studied  —  those  of  the  will 
and  the  intellect.  The  aesthetic  experience  itself  may  be 
analyzed  —  nay,  must  be  analyzed ;  and  by  this  means  it 
becomes  in  turn  less  fundamental  than  the  logical.  As 
subjectivism  and  objectivism  tilted  interminably,  so  there  is 
here  the  occasion  for  another  endless  seesaw;  viz.,  between 
the  three  kinds  of  idealism.  The  logical,  the  volitional,  the 
affective,  may  each  be  defined  in  concepts  of  the  others,  and 
any  sort  of  idealism  is  thereby  "  cut  under  "  by  any  other. 
If  the  aesthetic  type  had  been  able  to  deduce  the  fundamental 


154  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

categories  of  the  other  types,  it  would  have  remained  su- 
preme :  but  because  the  reality  it  lays  before  us  is  end  rather 
than  source,  it  cannot  do  so.  The  genetic  method  is  more 
concrete,  more  personal,  more  empirical;  but  it  has  thereby 
foregone  the  explaining  power  which  the  more  a  priori  de- 
ductions, in  however  abstract  a  fashion,  might  claim.  The 
balance  remains  pretty  nearly  equal,  between  the  three 
views.  All  are,  in  their  positive  teaching,  about  equally 
true;  none  refutes  the  others,  none  cuts  deeper  under  the 
others  than  they  under  it,  and  none  can  account  for  the  pres- 
ence of  its  rivals.  They  are  simply  cross-sections  of  the 
universe  from  three  distinct  angles;  they  miss  the  thickness 
of  fact,  for  they  have  discovered  no  productive  principle. 

Herewith  we  finish  our  study  of  the  first  argument  of 
Great  Subjectivism,  viz.,  the  argument  from  the  fecundity 
of  the  hypothesis  of  a  Great  Subject.  The  second  ground, 
as  we  have  already  said,  is  of  a  less  transcendental  nature. 
Its  evidence  is  not  drawn  from  conceptual  deduction  but  (at 
least  in  the  intention  of  its  defenders)  from  the  empirical 
results  of  psychology.  It  is  not,  to  be  sure,  employed  by  all 
idealists.  Some  of  them  —  e.  g.,  Professor  Rickert  (Gegen- 
stand  der  Erkenntnis,  pp.  57,  69,  and  107)  —  claim  that  the 
transcendental  deduction  of  categories  is  the  only  proper 
justification  of  so  ideal  a  being  as  the  Great  Subject ;  these 
thinkers  insist  upon  the  inadequacy  of  particular  psychologi- 
cal fact,  even  its  irrelevancy,  to  any  so  universal  problem. 
We  believe  that  they  are  open  to  some  charge  of  incon- 
sistency; as,  for  example,  we  find  Rickert  himself  building 
upon  Brentano's  theory  of  judgment  (op.  cit.,  p.  106) 
which  is  a  wholly  empirical  matter.  We  wish  however  to 
take  idealism  at  its  broadest,  and  to  neglect  no  one  of  the 
pleas  made  for  it  by  the  experts;  accordingly,  we  shall,  in 
spite  of  these  disclaimers,  proceed  to  the  psychological 
evidence  for  the  Head  of  the  universe. 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  155 

But  alas!  as  so  often  in  these  baffling  currents,  we  must 
first  clear  the  jutting  rocks  laid  bare  by  the  objections  just 
raised.  Characteristically  enough,  another  issue  has  here 
arisen  to  cleave  the  idealistic  party  in  twain :  the  issue  be- 
tween "  Psychologismus  "  and  "  Anti-psychologismus,"  as 
the  Germans  call  it.  This  dispute  we  witness  in  the  writing 
of  the  "  neo-Friesians  "  on  the  one  side  (a  leading  work  of 
their  camp  is  Leonard  Nelson's  Die  kritische  Methode  und  das 
Verhaltnis  der  Psychologic  zur  Philosophic,  Gottingen,  1904), 
and  on  the  other  the  work  of  such  logicians  as  Schiippe 
(Erkenntnistheoretike  Logik),  Husserl  (Logische  Unter- 
sttchungen),  Cohen  (Reine  Logik}  and  others.  The  defenders 
of  "  Psychologismus  "  argue  that  whatever  is,  is  accessible 
to  direct  verifying  observation  ordescribable  in  terms  of  such 
observation;  hence  the  transcendental  self,  the  universal 
mind,  and  other  "  pure  "  concepts  are  either  nothing  or  are 
part  and  parcel  of  the  concrete  stream  of  human  thought 
and  feeling.  The  latter  deny  .this  accessibility  to  experience, 
and  instance  many  entities  which  we  credit  with  reality, 
such  as  TT,  V2,  the  infinite,  or  indeed  any  "universal,"  con- 
cept or  law.  For  these  are  by  definition  incapable  of  ade- 
quate presentation  in  any  finite  series  of  cases,  such  as 
human  life  offers.  The  controversy  waxes  hottest  about  the 
nature  of  judgment;  for  idealism  has  agreed  to  define 
reality  as  the  object  of  a  valid  judgment.  We  find  the  one 
faction  urging  that  judgment  is  a  psychosis,  a  mental  event, 
and  should  be  investigated  quite  empirically;  the  other 
that  because  it  apprehends  an  external  reality  judgment  is 
more  than  a  mental  occurrence,  and  has  aspects  not  redu- 
cible to  psychical  terms.  It  seemed,  not  long  ago,  as  if  the 
latter  opinion  were  correct;  for  an  enterprising  psychologist, 
Karl  Marbe,  undertook  an  examination  of  the  psychical 
content  of  the  judging  process  (Marbe,  Untersuchung  uber 


156  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

die  Denkthatigkeit)  and  found  no  contents  that  seemed  con- 
stant to  all  his  subjects  and  relevant  to  the  process.  Accord- 
ingly, Marbe  decided  that  judgment  was  not  intrinsically  a 
psychosis.  Contradictory  though  this  seemed  to  common 
sense,  the  result  commended  itself  to  the  "  anti-psychologis- 
mus  "  people.  But  not  long  afterwards,  certain  experi- 
menters (Narziss  Ach,  H.  J.  Watt,  August  Messer,  Alfred 
Binet,  and  others)  deciding  that  Marbe 's  experiments  were 
not  sufficiently  thorough,  instigated  a  long  series  of  labora- 
tory studies  with  the  object  of  digging  out  psychological 
material  from  this  elusive  phenomenon.  And  they  claimed 
to  find  a  number  of  hitherto  unnamed  states.  At  the  same 
time,  Benno  Erdmann's  Umrisse  zur  Psychologic  des  Den- 
kens  (Sigwart  Festschrift,  Tubingen,  1900),  an  equally 
painstaking  investigation,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
material  discovered  by  such  methods  is  irrelevant  to  the 
real  nature  of  thought.  It  is  not  our  purpose  to  retail  these 
various  and  conflicting  deliverances;  the  reader  will  find  a 
resume  in  Titchener's  Experimental  Psychology  of  the 
Thought-Processes  (1910)  which  certainly  as  far  as  a  layman 
may  decide,  leaves  little  or  nothing  to  be  desired  in  the  way 
of  completeness.  The  residuum  of  accepted  result  is,  to  be 
sure,  small.  However  confident  we  may  be  that  future  ex- 
periments will  reveal  new  subject-matter  in  the  cognitive 
states  of  mind,  it  must  be  admitted  that  as  yet  the  "  antis  " 
are  not  definitely  refuted.  In  this  matter  we  can  simply 
look  to  the  experts  to  decide.  When,  indeed,  we  remember 
that  many  psychologists  nowadays  (among  them  no  less  an 
authority  than  the  experimentalist  Wundt)  deny  the  pos- 
sibility of  introspective  study  of  thought,  we  are  not  too 
sanguine  of  a  decision.  But  who  can  tell  what  new  argu- 
ments may  be  discovered  ?  Meanwhile  we  can  but  em- 
phasize the  fact  that  there  are  almost  as  many  different  and 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  157 

conflicting  theories  of  judgment  within  the  "  anti  "  faction 
as  within  the  other.  The  reader  may,  if  he  thinks  the  labour 
worth  while,  look  up  the  theories  of  Wundt,  B.  Erdmann, 
Marbe,  Bradley,  and  others,  and  see  whether  they  show 
more  or  less  disagreement  than  those  of  Sigwart,  Jerusalem, 
Brentano,  Mill,  Schrader,  and  their  "  psychologistic " 
allies.  The  philosophical  issue  is,  in  truth,  not  one  which 
may  be  settled  by  appeal  to  particular  facts  of  the  mental 
Ifie.  There  is  clearly  something  about  such  concepts  as  TT, 
Va,  the  infinite,  the  self,  which  is  not  attained  by  any  sum- 
mation of  particulars,  while  at  the  same  time  these  entities 
are  realized  only  in  the  particulars.  The  analogy  with  the 
subjective-objective  issue  is  perfect.  Real  objects  may 
always  be  described  in  subjective  terms,  but  those  terms 
never  contain  all  that  is  meant  by  "  real  "  as  over  against 
"  mental."  Yet  whatever  more  is  meant,  can  in  turn  be 
stated  in  subjective  phraseology  —  only  to  serve  as  an 
indication  once  more  of  something  not  yet  reached ;  and  so 
on  indefinitely.  This  we  saw  in  Chapter  IV.  It  is  the  same 
with  the  concept  and  the  psychical  symbol  or  the  particular 
image,  or  case  of  the  concept.  The  irrationals,  ir,  etc.,  can 
never  be  summed,  yet  every  decimal  place  that  can  be  named 
may  be  calculated  with  exactness.  It  is  the  relation  of 
more-to-come,  of  further  possible  cases,  that  is  not  repre- 
sented by  any  one  value  or  instance.  But  is  not  this  relation, 
this  possibility,  a  definite  content  present  here  and  now 
before  the  mind  ?  Is  it  not  in  a  psychical  process  that  we 
apprehend  it  ?  How  else  indeed  could  we  apprehend  it  but 
in  an  act  of  apprehension  ?  And  is  it  not  thereby  the  con- 
tent of  the  particular  state  in  which  it  is  apprehended,  as 
truly  as  for  subjectivism  the  object  is  content  of  the  subject  ? 
Undoubtedly  we  must  acknowledge  that  it  is.  All  that 
is,  as  subjectivism  showed,  is  content  of  the  mind  — 


158  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

whether  actual  or  possible  content.  For  even  the  possi- 
bility-of-further-instances  is  itself  something  thought  of. 
The  upholders  of  "  Psychologismus  "  are  correct.  But 
their  opponents  also  are  correct  when  they  insist  upon  the 
inadequacy  of  the  present  instance  to  express  the  whole 
series,  and  upon  the  inability  of  the  formula  "  more-to- 
come  "  to  tell  what  that  more  will  be.  The  never-ending  tilt 
follows  the  denial  of  either  side.  It  is  not  the  subjectivity 
of  the  concept,  or  its  extension  beyond  the  present  content, 
that  determines  what  the  future  cases  are  to  be,  but  the 
nature  of  the  concept  itself.  The  concept  TT  has  a  different 
second  decimal  from  that  of  the  concept  V^,  because  of  its 
own  intrinsic  qualities.  In  the  controversy  over  "  Psycho- 
logismus," then,  neither  side  gives  a  clue  to  the  nature  of 
concept  or  real  object;  and  neither  side  can  deny  the  cor- 
rectness of  the  other  except  when  that  other  denies  its  op- 
ponent. Meanwhile,  what  we  are  interested  in  is  not  the 
psychical  or  conceptual  character  of  the  Great  Self,  but  its 
reality  and  its  make-up.  With  this  we  pass  to  the  specific 
evidence  for  idealism  which  is  drawn  from  the  psychological 
field. 

Genetic  psychology,  it  is  alleged,  shows  that  one's  own 
self  is  a  social  product.  It  grows  with  and  by  its  fellow- 
selves.  The  child's  self  develops  by  imitation  of,  and  re- 
action to,  the  acts  of  already  formed  selves  (adults) ;  he  does 
not  know  he  has  a  self  until  he  is  aware  of  other  selves.  The 
mature  self  is  nothing  but  a  socius.  The  work  of  Baldwin 
and  Royce  in  this  field  (cf.  in  particular,  Royce,  World  and 
Individual,  II,  lect.  4,  "  Physical  and  Social  Reality  ")  is  well 
known ;  its  importance  for  idealism  is  not  sufficiently  recog- 
nized by  realistic  foes.  So  indispensable  is  the  position  for  a 
just  appreciation  of  idealism's  endeavour  to  be  concrete  that 
we  venture  to  give  it  a  distinct  title.  In  contrast  with  the 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  159 

isolated-self-doctrine  of  subjectivism,  viz.,  solipsism,  the 
social-self-doctrine  of  idealism  may  fitly  be  named  socip- 
sism.  It  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Great  Self  as  the  organic  unity 
and  identity  of  the  little  human  selves;  a  unity  involved  in 
the  structure  of  each  self,  and  verifiable  in  daily  experience. 
It  obeys  not  a  transcendental,  but  an  empirical  motive;  and 
the  two  props  of  idealism,  abstract  logic  and  concrete  psy- 
chology, here  meet  to  give  mutual  aid  and  comfort.  In 
modern  life,  powerful  influences  confirm  this  empirical 
prop.  All  our  emphasis  upon  "  social  service,"  the  spirit  of 
society,  altruism  as  the  chief  virtue,  democracy,  all  our  dread 
of  loneliness  and  our  contempt  of  obscurity,  combine  to 
render  the  distinction  between  the  socius  and  the  solus  into 
that  between  the  good  and  bad,  the  true  and  false.  The 
rapid  rise  into  favour  of  the  "  social  sciences  "  is  but  a  sign 
of  this.  Here,  as  with  other  philosophical  doctrines,  many 
motives  besides  the  intellectual  bring  about  the  current 
view.  And  those  who  oppose  the  claims  of  idealism,  built 
as  it  is  largely  upon  this  empirical  organic  theory  of  society, 
would  do  well  to  remember  that  they  are  opposing  the 
favourite  virtues  of  their  own  time.  Not  that  this  is  a  refu- 
tation of  their  position,  for  each  age  no  doubt  exaggerates 
certain  aspects  of  life  and  neglects  otners ;  but  it  is  well  to 
see  where  the  arguments  lead.  And  at  any  rate  it  seems 
difficult  to  find  other  rational  ground  for  the  preferred  vir- 
tues of  present-day  ethics,  than  this  one  of  the  mutual 
immanence  of  private  selves. 

This  doctrine  of  the  veridical  Great  Self  clinches  the  nail 
driven  by  the  other  line  of  reasoning  about  the  object  as  a 
universal.  The  real  external  things  in  Nature,  trees,  houses, 
and  rocks,  are,  in  the  teaching  of  idealism,  content  universal, 
common  to  many  minds.  They  are  also  defined  as  the  con- 
tent of  the  Great  Mind.  The  latter  thus  appears  as  the 


l6o  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

unity  of  the  various  particular  minds.  So  we  find  Royce 
speaking  of  matter  as  object  of  the  social  mind  (op.  cit., 
vol.  II,  p.  197).  A  scientific  truth  is  one  which  is  capable  of 
confirmation  by  many  expert  witnesses.  Such  unity,  how- 
ever, must  be  carefully  conceived;  it  does  not  intend  to 
contradict  a  diversity  of  the  little  selves.  The  tree  which 
you  and  I  see  is  undoubtedly  in  part  the  same ;  but  it  would 
be  very  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  point  out  exactly  those 
elements  of  it  which  carry  the  identity.  The  colour,  the 
shape,  the  position,  vary  with  the  place  and  the  sense- 
organs  of  each  observer.  It  is  rather  the  conceptual  limit, 
the  object  of  inference  toward  which  the  sensuous  messages 
point,  that  forms  the  identical  content  in  the  diverse  minds. 
This  is  expressed  by  every-day  language  in  the  phrase 
"  that  particular  tree  which  we  all  mean  ";  that  is  the  com- 
mon element.  And  while  this  limit  is  more  than  the  content 
of  any  one  mind,  it  is  the  content  of  that  unity  of  all  minds 
which  constitutes  the  Great  Self.  The  idealist  may  of 
course  be  asked  where  he  will  put  these  outstanding  diver- 
sities between  your  presentation  of  the  tree  and  mine;  but 
the  reply  is  at  hand.  He  may  put  them  in  either  of  two 
regions.  In  so  far  as  they  are  erroneous,  he  may  relegate 
them  to  the  particular  mind  of  the  observer  alone.  If  I  am 
red-blind,  the  tint  of  the  autumn  leaves  as  seen  by  me  will 
not  be  identical  with  that  hue  which  delights  your  eye :  my 
visual  content  lies  in  that  realm  of  fancy,  the  merely  private. 
It  is  true  that  this  gives  rise  to  grave  objections  connected 
with  the  problem  of  error.  But  that  problem,  as  will  even- 
tually appear,  is  a  difficulty  to  every  philosophic  type  alike, 
and  it  is  therefore  not  open  to  the  opponent  to  condemn 
idealism  for  not  squaring  with  the  real  presence  of  illusory 
objects.  Hence  for  the  present  we  may  disregard  this  criti- 
cism. The  other  alternative  before  idealism  has  to  do  with 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  l6l 

the  data  before  my  mind  when  they  are  correct  but  diver- 
gent from  the  correct  data  of  your  mind.  The  fir  tree  as,  I 
see  it  may  have  a  general  conical  figure,  while  to  you  who 
look  from  a  different  angle,  it  is  shaped  more  like  an  egg  on 
end.  Now  neither  of  these  is  incorrect:  the  outline  of  the 
tree  is  really  such  that  from  one  angle  it  looks  a  cone,  from 
another,  an  egg.  Both  are  to  be  included  in  the  true  nature 
of  the  object,  each  admitting  the  truth  of  the  other.  The 
differences  are  due  to  each  observer  abstracting  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  other.  The  identity  is  found  by  each 
including  the  ignored  aspect  and  arriving  at  the  same  total 
as  the  other.  In  this  way,  then,  may  idealism  show  the 
numerical  sameness  of  the  many  minds. 

But  not  alone  on  its  theory  of  Nature  and  self -conscious- 
ness does  the  present  argument  of  idealism  lean.  A  similar 
chain  of  reasoning  is  drawn  from  the  doctrine  of  interest. 
And  this  turn  of  reflection,  though  not  more  coercive,  is 
perhaps  more  persuasive.  My  own  self  is  best  realized  when 
I  identify  my  own  interests  with  those  of  the  social  group, 
and  the  greatest  self  is  he  whose  interests  have  the  greatest 
social  intension.  The  argument  may  easily  be  enlarged  by 
ethical  and  psychological  detail.  Its  appeal  to  the  sympa- 
thetic instincts  is  powerful :  to  many  minds,  the  coincidence 
of  warm  sentiment  with  the  cold  constraint  of  reason  forms 
irresistible  circumstantial  evidence.  That  these  considera- 
tions are  exact  or  exhaustive,  however,  would  be  too  much 
to  claim.  Psychology  is  hardly  in  so  established  a  state  that 
we  can  base  philosophy  very  firmly  upon  it.  Yet  there  seems 
to  be  a  great  loose  body  of  evidence  which  goes  to  show  that 
the  self  is  in  high  degree  social.  For  accuracy's  sake  we  had 
better  say  that  a  large  part  of  the  content  of  the  self,  whether 
on  its  cognitive,  active,  or  sensible  aspects,  is  of  social  origin. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  does  seem  clear  that  idealists  have 


1 62  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

underestimated  certain  instincts  which  extol  solitude  and 
independence,  and  have  neglected  a  considerable  body  of 
evidence  which  would  argue  against  the  social-fusion  view. 
At  best,  the  idealists  have  hardly  done  more  than  to  point 
out  the  actuality  and  the  importance  of  the  social  side  of 
human  nature. 

Some  amount  of  unity  and  mutual  implication  between 
our  various  private  selves,  then,  undoubtedly  exists.  The 
empirical  plea  of  our  type  has  a  measure  of  truth.  But  is 
there  enough  truth  in  it  for  the  purposes  of  idealism  ?  It 
seems  fair  to  answer  that  the  common  part  of  all  the  mem- 
bers of  our  race,  taken  together  with  their  interpenetration, 
is  sufficient  to  intimate  a  Head  of  the  universe,  in  the  sense  of 
a  rough  unity  of  their  minds'  contents  and  their  interests. 
So  far  as  their  objects  and  interests  are  one,  doubtless  the 
many  minds  are  also  one.  But  for  aught  that  is  yet  shown, 
this  unity  may  be  of  a  sort  that  mankind  finds  no  special 
satisfaction  in  discovering. 

The  Great  Self  has  present  to  it  all  those  objects  which  are 
verified  by  many  witnesses.  How  many  witnesses  ?  We 
are  never  certain  as  to  the  required  number ;  and  in  practice 
this  uncertainty  cuts  the  muscle  of  the  social  argument. 
What  seems  almost  universally  confirmed  in  one  age  may  be 
discarded  in  the  next  —  so  testifies  the  history  of  science,  of 
ethics,  of  politics.  All  we  can  say  is,  that  what  eventually  is 
agreed  upon  by  the  experts,  working  independently,  will  be 
the  truth.  The  One  Mind  which  sees  all  things  gives  us  no 
clew  to  what  those  things  will  be.  After  all,  is  any  more 
knowledge  afforded  by  the  statement  that  the  truth  is 
object  of  One  Mind,  than  by  the  proposition  that  the  truth 
is  the  agreement  between  many  minds  ?  The  One  Mind  has 
nothing  uniquely  its  own,  nothing  from  which  we  can  infer 
the  character  of  what  is  present  to  it,  or  the  map  of  reality. 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  163 

It  remains  a  purely  formal  unity;  a  large  circumference 
which  is  bound  to  include  all  within  the  map.  It  is  not  the 
mental  quality  of  it,  that  helps  our  knowledge;  it  is  the 
unity  and  the  agreement  between  all  men  which  it  holds 
out  as  a  final  criterion  of  the  truth,  or  goal  —  it  is  that  alone 
which  is  helpful  to  the  seeker  after  knowledge.  But  this 
unity  may  quite  as  well  be  put  in  realistic  as  in  idealistic 
terms.  We  grant,  then,  that  there  is,  actually,  concretely, 
in  each  of  us,  a  consciousness  big  enough  to  include  what 
others  are  conscious  of;  and  this  may  be  true  even  though 
we  do  not  know  just  what  in  particular  and  exactly  is  this 
common  stock  of  truth.  Nevertheless  such  a  great  con- 
sciousness gives  no  indication  of  the  structure,  the  laws,  the 
behaviour,  of  the  contents  before  it.  True,  but  nugatory, 
must  be  the  verdict. 

The  like  is  to  be  said  of  that  approximate  unity  of  interests 
which  constitutes  the  emotional  and  practical  tissue  of  this 
large  Self.  My  self  is  social,  yes;  my  interests  are  indeed 
bound  up  with  yours;  but  what  will  be  the  true  realization 
of  that  self  and  those  interests  ?  The  fact  that  the  Great 
Unity  identifies  them  all,  does  not  help  us  to  know,  of  any 
particular  desire,  whether  its  fulfilment  would  promote 
your  interests  as  well  as  my  own.  It  is  the  specific  nature  of 
each  end  which  alone  decides  that.  Is  it  for  your  best  in- 
terest and  mine,  for  the  fullest  realization  of  your  self  and 
my  own,  that  the  government  should  take  over  the  rail- 
ways ?  that  children  should  be  brought  up  by  the  state  ? 
Psychological  idealism  pretty  generally  has  come  to  admit 
that  there  is  no  deduction  of  particular  institutions  such  as 
the  family,  this  or  that  kind  of  state,  or  system  of  education. 
Certainly,  if  there  is,  it  cannot  be  based  upon  the  empirical 
fact  that  we  are  in  the  main  social  beings.  All  that  socipsism 
teaches  is  that  we  must  in  general  live  with  others,  learn 


164  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

from  them  and  instruct  them,  work  with  them  in  coopera- 
tion and  competition  (both  ?  or  only  one  ?)  —  in  short,  that 
whatever  we  do  we  are  in  large  measure  mutually  dependent. 
For  the  tracing  of  consequences  from  this  dependence,  we 
must  go  back  to  those  deductions  of  categories  which  made 
up  the  transcendental  argument  of  idealism.  That  argu- 
ment we  have  already  dealt  with.  From  the  empirical  de- 
fence we  gain  a  Great  Self  whose  unity  is  no  more  significant 
for  knowledge,  than  is  the  string  which  we  use  to  tie  up  a 
bundle  of  sticks  significant  of  their  shape,  weight,  or  number. 
Idealism,  like  subjectivism  and  objectivism,  views  the 
world  from  one  corner,  albeit  a  fascinating  one.  Charmed 
with  the  concept  of  personal  individuality,  it  resolves  to 
envisage  all  reality  from  that  coign  of  vantage.  It  would  re- 
duce everything  to  a  function  of  some  Immense  Person. 
And  it  has  succeeded  in  doing  so.  Indeed  any  corner  in  the 
universe  affords  a  unique  perspective  of  the  whole  scene, 
and  all  within  the  panorama  may  be  truly  denned  from  that 
perspective.  But  such  projection  is  bound  to  distort  the 
vision;  certain  jutting  points  will  stand  out  magnified, 
others  will  be  diminished,  still  others  cast  into  shadow. 
Idealism  has  proved  its  case  at  the  cost  of  specific  informa- 
tion. It  has  secured  truth  but  it  has  lost  pertinence.  Its 
adversaries,  feeling  the  barrenness  of  the  net  result,  have 
straightway  endeavoured  to  disprove  it.  Failure  in  this 
endeavour  leads  to  a  reaction  in  which  idealism  again  proves 
its  case.  For  it  is  futile  to  try  to  break  down  the  chain  of 
reasoning.  It  is,  in  our  opinion,  unbreakable.  At  the  same 
time,  we  must  acknowledge  the  force  of  the  reasons  which 
have  led  to  revolt:  namely,  its  unsatisfactoriness  to  the 
instinct  which  seeks  a  map  of  the  universe  for  purpose 
either  of  practical  advantage  or  contemplation. 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  165 

As  a  matter  of  history,  idealism's  thinness  has  reacted 
upon  idealism  itself;  the  philosophic  disease  has  in  these 
latter  days  of  the  system  broken  out  in  an  aggravated  form. 
The  particular  projection  of  reality  which  it  has  affected 
conceals  the  contours  and  indentations  of  reality's  map;  it 
gives  a  bare  circumference  with  no  filling.  The  evanescent 
reality  takes  revenge;  in  true  Hegelian  fashion,  idealism 
gradually  takes  on  the  colour  of  a  doctrine  which  gives  no 
acquaintance  with  reality.  This  was  foreshadowed  in 
Kant's  doctrine  of  the  things-in-themselves.  They  were  the 
real  things,  and  we  could  never  know  them.  All  that  we 
know  is  unavoidable  illusion.  Later  thinkers,  beginning  with 
Fichte,  expunged  this  germ  which  infected  human  knowl- 
edge with  error.  But  since  idealism  had  no  principle  for 
discovering  the  empirical  contents,  it  could  not  provide  a 
guarantee  of  the  reality  of  what  we  see  in  our  experience. 
If  now  there  are  no  "  things-in-themselves,"  everything  we 
can  know  remains,  not  merely  illusion,  but  illusion  about 
nothing;  for  there  is  nothing  in  the  background  of  phenom- 
ena. It  is  but  as  if  things  were  what  they  seem  to  be.  The 
Great  Person  is  a  form  without  content;  he  works  in  vacua 
—  if  even  he  can  be  said  actually  to  work.  This  result  has 
been  reached  by  that  most  faithful  of  Kantian  students, 
Professor  Vaihinger,  in  the  Philosophic  des  Als  Ob.  Here 
we  find  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  that  method  which  would 
derive  reality  from  the  subject  —  however  colossal  the 
frame  of  that  subject  may  be.  Nothing  is ;  we  can  only  say, 
it  is  as  if  it  were.  Of  course  it  is  not  merely  the  unsatis- 
factoriness  of  the  consummation  that  we  condemn;  it  is  its 
patent  falsity.  Everybody  does  believe  that  reality  is 
somewhere  and  somehow  known  —  if  only  the  real  fact  that 
doubting  occurs.  This  Descartes  pointed  out;  and  if  he 
presumed  to  interpret  it  in  the  subjective  sense  of  the  Cogito 


1 66  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

ergo  sum,  introducing  a  point  of  view  whose  pleasantness  to 
man  obscured  its  barrenness,  the  objective  correctness 
of  his  discovery  remains  to  rebuke  this  last  product  of  the 
subjective  interpretation. 

The  subjective  types,  both  little  and  great,  have  herewith 
exhausted  themselves.  Whatever  other  types  we  find,  will 
be  objective,  realistic,  or  else  of  a  sort  which  is  foreign  to  this 
whole  issue.  But  before  we  proceed  to  these  types,  it  will  be 
instructive,  perhaps,  to  make  some  comments  upon  the 
general  bearings  of  idealism.  The  doctrine  has,  apparently, 
had  a  tremendous  influence  upon  modern  history  —  notably 
upon  German  political  ideals  and  methods  (as  is  beauti- 
fully shown  in  Dewey's  German  Philosophy  and  Politics), 
and  our  accusation  of  barrenness  is  therefore  not  easily  ad- 
mitted in  the  practical  realm.  Scientifically  impotent 
though  it  is,  may  it  not  lead  to  fundamental  modifications 
in  national  policy  ?  In  considering  this  question,  too,  we 
shall  be  led  to  see  something  of  the  real  influence  of  phi- 
losophy upon,  as  well  as  its  indifference  to,  the  practical 
issues  of  life. 

It  is  true  that  the  human  thinkers  who  have  taken 
idealism  as  an  absolutely  true  system,  have  acted  quite  dif- 
ferently from  those  who  denied  it.  One  who  thinks  that  a 
certain  group  of  categories  must  be,  no  matter  what  is  the 
empirical  material  filling  them  up,  will  naturally  stand  for 
the  supremacy  of  system,  at  almost  any  cost  to  the  individual. 
He  will  prefer  a  rigid  national  structure  to  the  comfort  of  the 
individuals  who  compose  it ;  he  will  tend  to  condemn  politi- 
cal experiment,  the  fickle  popular  vote,  or  other  democratic 
measures;  he  will  tend  to  despise  that  readiness  to  learn  by 
experience  and  to  adopt  working  compromises,  which  has 
characterized  pragmatic  and  realistic  Anglo-Saxon  com- 
munities. These  effects  are  plain,  in  the  efficiency  of 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  167 

modern  Germany;  the  vast  difference  between  the  life  of 
the  German  private  citizen  and  that  of  the  American,  is 
obvious  enough.  The  experimental  attitude  of  pragmatism 
(a  type  later  to  be  examined)  could  not  find  much  sympathy 
in  Germany;  the  idealistic  system  of  categories  could  not 
long  command  wide  support  among  philosophers  of  England 
or  the  United  States.  How  then  shall  we  say  that  the  Great 
Self  is  but  a  figure-head  ? 

We  might  find  similar  practical  bearings  of  other  systems. 
The  Platonic  realist,  as  we  shall  soon. see,  resembles  the 
idealist  in  valuing  the  continuance  of  the  State  above  the 
welfare  of  the  individual  citizen;  the  nominalist  is  likely  to 
do  the  opposite.  In  our  own  civil  war,  the  Republican 
and  Democratic  parties  were  thus  aligned ;  and  even  at  the 
present  day,  the  alignment  has  not  ceased.  The  former 
is  roughly  the  party  of  the  vested  interests,  the  latter  the 
champion  of  the  rights  of  the  masses.  The  monist  with  his 
theory  of  the  social  organism,  is  not  apt  to  favour  compe- 
tition, laissez  faire,  individual  enterprise ;  the  pluralist  and 
empiricist  is  led  in  that  direction.  The  philosophy  of 
Catholicism  could  not  be  the  same  as  that  of  Protestantism. 
It  would,  we  dare  say,  be  true  that  no  fundamental  phil- 
osophic doctrine  is  without  its  effect  upon  the  political 
ideals,  the  religious  attitude,  or  the  moral  principles,  of  its 
upholder.  Scoffers  are  fond  of  illustrating  the  irrelevancy 
of  philosophic  issues  by  the  mediaeval  dispute  over  the  num- 
ber of  angels  who  can  dance  upon  the  needle's  point;  but, 
as  philosophers  know,  the  real  question  there  was,  whether 
personal  individuality  is  indifferent  to  space-occupancy  and 
possession  of  a  physical  body.  The  man  who  holds  that  it  is, 
may  well  believe  in  immortality,  the  man  who  denies  it, 
generally  does  not.  These  two  will,  in  their  religion  and 
ethics,  differ  profoundly;  they  will,  it  may  readily  be  imag- 


1 68  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

ined,  behave  in  quite  opposite  ways  upon  being  faced  with 
death  or  bereavement.  Certainly  they  have  often,  though 
by  no  means  universally,  done  so.  Now  many  writers  have 
accredited  this  claim  of  philosophy  to  kinship  with  be- 
haviour, but  (disliking  for  some  reason  to  grant  efficacy  to 
the  former)  have  insisted  that  the  philosophical  tenets  were 
effect  rather  than  cause.  It  does  not  really  matter;  the 
point  is  that  certain  deep-seated  reactions  upon  the  environ- 
ment have  been  made  by  men,  and  that  the  main  types  of 
philosophy  have  at  least  corresponded  with  the  types  of 
reaction.  There  is  not  mutual  indifference;  either  may  be 
taken  as  on  the  whole  an  index  of  the  other. 

That  belief  influences  action  is  today  a  psychological  com- 
monplace ;  but  it  may  influence  it  profitably,  or  again  it  may 
influence  it  to  futile  or  even  injurious  results.  If  one's  phi- 
losophy induces  one  to  go  to  church  on  Sunday,  then  that 
philosophy  is  not  indifferent  to  his  conduct;  but  if  the  going 
to  church  on  Sunday  has  no  effect  upon  his  behaviour  during 
the  rest  of  the  week  and  no  connection  with  his  understand- 
ing of  the  universe's  plan,  that  conduct  may  still  be  called 
indifferent  to  his  life.  Or  if,  indeed,  going  to  church  makes 
him  endeavour  to  refute  the  creeds  of  others  who  go  to  other 
churches,  or  even  to  persecute  them,  and  in  such  a  way  that 
they  inevitably  do  the  same  to  him,  while  neither  has  any 
greater  truth  than  the  other  —  then  his  conduct  may  be 
called  not  only  indifferent  but  injurious.  It  consumes 
energy  needed  for  constructive  work,  promotes  unhappiness, 
and  makes  life  poorer  because  less  inclusive  than  it  might 
otherwise  be.  Now,  is  not  the  conduct  which  is  in  line  with 
idealism  something  like  this  sort  of  Sunday  worship  ?  The 
result  (or  the  cause,  if  you  will)  of  the  idealistic  philosophy  is 
the  tendency  to  a  propagandism  of  systematic,  rigorously 
ordered  political  life.  Perhaps  it  goes  further,  and  affects 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM  169 

the  conception  of  home  life,  social  observance,  economic  dis- 
tribution, etc.  In  fact,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  does.  But 
this  result  is  a  rough,  vague  affair.  It  never  descends  to 
detail.  It  never  enables  us  to  deduce  a  particular  institu- 
tion: only  institution  in  general.  From  the  beginning 
idealism  was  powerless  to  do  that.  The  special  categories 
of  industry,  the  nation,  the  family,  which  Miinsterberg's 
exhaustive  inquiry  arrayed  before  us,  were,  as  we  saw,  found 
in  experience,  not  provided  by  idealism.  Only  the  spirit  of 
respect  for  law  and  order,  in  all  spheres,  is  the  essence  of 
idealism's  practical  contribution.  Now  if  this  spirit  is  in- 
tolerant of  a  fair  measure  of  freedom,  and  social  experiment, 
it  becomes  an  evil.  In  modern  civilization  it  has  become  an 
evil,  for  it  has  aided  and  abetted  the  intolerance  of  the 
Prussian  idea  of  the  state;  it  has  led  to  war.  It  has  no 
patience  with  the  other  side,  the  pragmatic,  rough,  irregular 
side  of  life,  which  our  own  American  practice  upholds.  We 
ourselves  may  be  accused,  doubtless,  of  an  analogous  im- 
patience. The  narrowness  of  the  pragmatic  attitude  shall  be 
later  dwelt  upon ;  at  present  we  are  studying  idealism.  The 
spirit  of  respect  for  law  and  order  —  indispensable  as  it  is  — 
becomes  injurious  when  it  is  entertained  in  too  exclusive  a 
fashion.  The  same  thing  happens  in  the  practical  field  as  in 
the  theoretical.  If  people  refute  one  another  in  theory,  they 
fight  one  another,  in  however  refined  a  way,  in  practice.  A 
man's  personality  is  normally  one;  as  he  thinks,  so  he  acts; 
and  as  he  acts,  so  he  thinks.  If  the  theoretical  aspect  of 
idealism  leads  to  an  endless  tilt,  the  practical  side  leads  to  an 
endless  warfare  between  the  state  and  the  individual,  the 
conservative  and  the  radical,  the  partisan  of  order  and  the 
partisan  of  freedom.  Instead  of  pooling  their  gains  and 
cooperating,  the  factions  try  to  destroy  each  other,  and 
thereby  they  diminish  the  sum  of  thought  and  life.  Mean- 


1 70  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

while,  the  real  problem  of  government,  of  economics,  of 
family  life,  etc.,  is:  how  much  system  and  how  much  free- 
dom shall  we  have  ?  How  much  of  either  is  fitting  for  the 
German  people,  how  much  for  the  North  American,  the 
English,  or  the  French  ?  And  how  much  for  each  aspect  of 
life  ?  Such  a  problem  is  not  solved  by  accepting  idealism  as 
the  absolute  truth;  nor  yet  by  rejecting  it  in  favour  of  a 
practical  nominalism  or  individualism.  It  is  solved  by  the 
study  of  the  special  questions  in  each  of  these  fields;  a 
study  conceived  in  the  spirit  of  respect  for  law  and  for  as 
much  individual  freedom  to  experiment  as  is  consistent  with 
good  social  order.  Idealism,  then,  if  not  conceived  in  ex- 
clusion, contributes  an  indispensable  attitude;  but,  as  we 
shall  find,  so  does  every  other  type  of  philosophy.  Beyond 
this,  it  has  no  claim  to  superior  truth  or  value.  It  does  not 
gratify  the  religious  instinct  for  a  personal  God,  for  a  Great 
Artist  or  Artificer  of  the  Universe;  for  its  Great  Subject  is 
not  a  Maker.  It  does  not  help  the  scientific  instinct  for 
comprehension  of  the  scheme  of  things.  And  with  all  this 
failure  to  solve  the  original  problem  of  man,  it  remains 
irrefutable.  It  is  so  thin  as  to  extend  its  truth  everywhere. 
Of  course  these  things  have  all  been  said  before ;  notably 
by  Hegel,  who  is  called  an  idealist.  In  Chapter  IX  we  shall 
find  that  the  title  is  not  discriminating  enough;  at  any  rate, 
Hegel's  idealism  is  of  a  fundamentally  different  kind  from 
any  of  the  above  systems.  And  we  shall  also  discover  that 
Hegel  himself  was  guilty  of  a  similar  fault  to  the  one  just 
mentioned.  But  his  warning  to  humanity  against  the  one- 
sidedness  to  which  it  is  prone,  needs  reemphasis  at  every 
stage  of  life.  "  The  sort  of  truth  that  is  in  most  danger  of 
getting  itself  ignored  is  the  whole  truth  "  says  even  that 
arch-antagonist  of  Hegel,  Professor  Perry  (The  Free  Man 
and  the  Soldier,  p.  vii).  And  if  that  lesson  is  itself  but  one 


GREAT  SUBJECTIVISM 

which  needs  to  be  counterbalanced  by  a  correlative  and 
opposite  caution,  it  is  none  the  less  sound,  and  necessary  for 
a  just  understanding  of  the  whole  problem  of  life. 

But  we  cannot  expect  human  thinkers  to  forego  the  at- 
tempt to  characterize  the  universe  from  one  corner,  until  a 
great  many  corners  have  been  tried.  The  revolt  against 
idealism  which  its  exclusiveness  is  bound  to  occasion,  will 
probably  go  to  the  other  extreme.  The  next  type  which  we 
are  to  consider  will  probably  reverse  idealism's  point  of 
view.  Instead  of  reducing  objects  to  a  phase  of  some  Great 
Person,  it  will  reduce  personality,  selfhood,  consciousness, 
to  terms  of  objects  and  their  relations  and  functions.  It  will 
claim  that  the  errors  of  idealism  are  due  to  its  having 
started  wrong:  to  its  having  been  loaded  down  from  the 
beginning  with  an  infertile  hypothesis.  That  hypothesis  — 
the  Universal  Mind  —  must  now  be  discarded.  Interesting 
and  valuable  as  personality  is,  it  has  no  metaphysical  supe- 
riority, no  preeminent  philosophical  virtue.  The  world 
itself,  the  objective  universe,  is  what  the  great  initial  prob- 
lem incites  us  to  study.  This  new  reform,  then,  erases  the 
lines  drawn  on  the  idealistic  chart,  and  commences  a  New 
Year  with  high  hopes  of  discovery.  A  candid  empiricism,  a 
fair  field  for  all  hypotheses,  a  simple  recording  of  the  objec- 
tive facts  as  they  are  —  this  will  be  its  spirit.  Objectivism 
is  indicated ;  but  not  the  rather  superficial  one  of  the  com- 
mon-sense dualism,  for  that  was  met  by  idealism.  A  deeper 
objectivism  is  needed,  which  describes  everything,  even  the 
subject,  as  one  fact  among  others,  and  to  be  defined,  as  all 
others  are,  by  its  relations  to  the  rest.  The  face  of  this 
resolution  is  steadfastly  set  towards  reality.  We  have  re- 
turned to  the  original  naive  attitude,  but  we  are  equipped 
with  the  wisdom  drawn  from  experience  of  error.  Is  not  the 
promise  fairer  than  it  was  at  the  outset  ? 


CHAPTER  VII 

GREAT  OBJECTIVISM 

THE  conclusion  of  the  last  chapter  showed  another  New 
Year  dawning  in  the  history  of  thought,  and  another  set 
of  resolutions  being  framed.  The  troubles  of  philosophy  are 
due  —  so  it  was  thought  —  to  the  barren  point  of  view 
which  the  subjective  types  adopted.  Even  the  Great  Self 
cannot  explain  the  make-up  of  the  actual  world;  it  is  un- 
illuminating.  Nay  more,  it  is  a  provoker  of  controversy; 
for  idealism  has  internal  dissensions.  Let  us  then  lay  the 
axe  to  this  root  of  evil ;  let  us  abandon  the  figment !  But  its 
fall  involves  others.  If  the  Great  Self  is  exiled,  its  kinsman 
the  private  subject  is  hardly  likely  to  be  a  court  favourite. 
Realistic  criticism  has  shown  that  the  latter  cannot  so  much 
as  account  for  the  presence  of  external  reality  —  to  say 
nothing  of  its  characters  —  without  the  help  of  the  Universal 
Mind ;  and  idealism  laid  its  foundations  in  accordance  with 
this  criticism.  To  lose  faith  in  the  Great  Self  is  then  to  take 
from  the  little  selves  what  makes  them  in  any  degree  fun- 
damental. Yet  on  the  other  hand,  these  individuals  are 
more  obviously  real  than  the  Universal  Self;  for  every  man 
seems  to  know  himself  in  some  way  immediately  present, 
while  he  sees  not  this  vast  personality,  nor  empirically 
verifies  it.  The  empirical  argument  for  idealism  was  found 
to  vanish  into  the  transcendental  argument.  The  new  sys- 
tem will  therefore  not  cast  out  utterly  the  private  person- 
ality or  consciousness,  as  it  does  the  public  one;  rather  it 
will  admit  it,  but  rid  it  of  its  subjectivity,  analyze  it  into 

17* 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  173 

terms  of  objects  and  relations  of  objects.  Resolved,  that  the 
objective  side  of  the  universe  is  the  sole  reality:  —  so  reads 
the  first  article  of  the  new  creed.  The  novelty  lies  in  treating 
the  subjects  just  as  subjectivism  treated  the  objects;  and 
the  result  is  a  quite  objective  metaphysics.  "  Pan-objec- 
tivism "  it  has  been  called,  in  disregard  of  linguistic  pro- 
priety; the  commoner  name  is  "new  realism."  We  have 
already  seen  that  "  realism  "  is  an  egregious  misnomer,  im- 
plying as  it  does  an  opponent  defending  "  unrealism  "  who 
never  existed.  It  is  not  the  reality  of  anything  that  is  here 
mooted,  but  the  objectivity  of  the  subject.  In  consequence 
of  the  thoroughness  of  the  objectivism  it  would  seem  fittest 
to  call  the  type  Great  Objectivism.  It  is  correlative  to  Great 
Subjectivism  in  denying  the  substantiality  of  its  counter- 
part and  in  giving  a  definition  of  that  counterpart  in  terms 
of  itself. 

Consciousness,  then,  is  to  be  reduced  to  a  kind  of  function, 
or  phase,  or  process,  of  objects.  Not  necessarily  physical 
objects;  concepts,  Platonic  ideas,  "subsisting"  relations, 
all  these  may  have  their  share  in  the  constitution  of  a  mind. 
The  view  is  broader  than  materialism.  Yet  its  method  is 
somewhat  analogous:  if  it  has  given  up  the  old  attempt  to 
find  a  stuff-definition  of  mind  —  an  attempt  in  which  ma- 
terialism never  succeeded  —  it  is  influenced  by  the  modern 
predilection  for  functions,  series,  relations,  behaviour,  and 
the  transeunt  generally,  and  wishes  to  give  a  relational  defi- 
nition. Mind  is  to  be  a  certain  kind  of  process  or  combina- 
tion of  things  or  concepts :  even  as  more  modern  materialism 
tended  to  regard  thought  as  a  kind  of  motion,  rather  than 
like  the  old,  as  a  secretion,  juicy  or  gaseous. 

In  consequence  of  the  radically  objective  character  of  this 
reform,  the  objects  of  knowledge  will  be  regarded  as  inde- 
pendent of  mind.  "  Independent  "  is  here  used  to  signify 


174  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

that  objects  exist  and  are  what  they  are,  whether  minds  are 
aware  of  them  or  not.  It  connotes  the  indifference  of  objects 
to  our  consciousness  of  them.  When  minds  become  aware 
of  real  things,  the  content  of  the  mind  is  dependent  upon  the 
existence  and  character  of  the  objects,  but  in  no  other  sense 
can  dependence  be  alleged.  Ordinary  or  dualistic  realism  — 
which  we  called  objectivism  —  did  not  go  so  far  as  this;  it 
was  content  to  show  that  objects  are  numerically  other  than 
our  mind's  contents.  But,  as  we  saw,  subjectivism  could 
meet  this  "  otherness  "  by  showing  that  "  otherness  "  is 
itself  a  relation  to  the  mind.  Great  Objectivism,  however, 
would  cut  under  subjectivism;  it  makes  objects  too  great 
to  be  reducible  to  such  a  relation.  It  will  not  degrade  them 
by  assigning  them  a  relative  status;  it  therefore  abolishes 
the  relation  of  otherness  entirely.  When  I  am  aware  of  an 
object,  that  object  is  not  other  than  my  mind;  my  mind 
enters  into,  nay,  is  the  object.  Here  is  a  return  to  the  old 
view  of  common-sense  that  we  know  reality  directly  and 
immediately;  hence  the  view  is  sometimes  called  naive 
realism.  But  the  motive  of  it  all  is  independence.  Here 
stands  the  object,  and  it  is  what  it  is  and  needs  no  mind  or 
relation  to  mind  to  constitute  it.  If  I  wish  to  know  it,  I 
must  enter  into  it.  7  am  in  knowing  dependent  upon  it,  but 
it  is  not  dependent  upon  me.  In  fact,  my  whole  mind,  in  the 
cognitive  aspect  at  least,  is  constituted  by  the  objects,  and 
the  functions  of  them,  with  which  it  identifies  itself.  Thus 
independence  leads  to  a  presentational  theory  of  knowledge ; 
we  know  objects  directly  and  immediately  as  they  are  in 
themselves.  Even  in  the  case  of  the  secondary  qualities, 
and  of  errors,  the  content  of  the  mind  is  objective. 

Corresponding  to  the  deduction  of  categories  in  idealism, 
we  may  expect  a  deduction  of  the  subjective  world  here.  To 
some  extent  this  has  been  carried  out,  though,  owing  to  the 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM 

recency  of  the  movement,  not  as  far  as  we  could  wish.  There 
are  a  few  attempts  to  account  for  the  origin  of  the  psychical 
and  of  some  of  its  leading  characters,  such  as  error,  ideas, 
hypotheses.  But  we  do  not  find  as  yet  any  clear-cut  system 
of  Great  Objectivism,  corresponding  in  patience  and  detail 
with  such  systems  as  those  of  Natorp  and  Miinsterberg. 
Nevertheless  we  may,  perhaps,  eventually  expect  them. 

Such  a  type  fascinates  us  by  its  novelty,  its  thoroughgoing 
quality,  and  its  independence  of  tradition.  Like  every  other 
philosophic  view,  it  is  due  to  the  combination  of  several  mo- 
tives besides  the  rational  one.  If  idealism  makes  its  appeal 
largely  to  the  respect  we  feel  for  personality  and  its  daughter 
art,  Great  Objectivism  rests  mainly  upon  the  correlative 
feeling  of  respect  for  the  impersonal  facts,  the  world  of 
nature  and  science.  Where  the  accumulated  store  of  human 
labour  in  literature,  fine  art,  institutional  religion,  and  social 
convention  is  large  and  impressive,  the  new  view  will  not 
easily  raise  its  head;  where  the  worship  of  these  things  is 
lighter,  its  growth  is  more  favoured.  Hence  in  the  western 
world  is  found  the  more  ardent  advocacy  of  the  present  type. 
In  Germany  and  France  it  hardly  exists;  in  England,  its 
chief  defenders  are  found  less  in  the  literary  centres  than  in 
the  traditional  home  of  science,  Cambridge,  and  in  the  newer 
universities.  Reverence  for  science,  however,  may  assume 
different  forms.  Progress  in  science  has  depended  upon  two 
factors:  the  experimental  and  the  mathematical  method. 
Science  has  given  us  an  ever  fuller  knowledge  of  the  detail  of 
fact;  it  has  also  by  mathematical  refinements  been  able  to 
subject  our  knowledge  to  a  more  and  more  exact  deductive 
reasoning.  Two  motives  then  appear:  empiricism,  and 
exact  deduction,  or  rationalism.  No  true  philosopher  can 
help  following  these  ideals;  they  stand  for  all  that  is  right- 
eous in  thinking,  over  against  the  seductions  of  hope,  fear, 


1 76  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

the  will-to-believe,  as  the  essence  of  intellectual  sin.  And  if 
idealism  made  much  of  its  appeal  to  the  latter  side  of  human 
nature,  Great  Objectivism  may  claim  a  higher  moral  tone, 
comparable  to  the  categorical  imperative  itself,  in  the  wor- 
ship of  truth  for  its  own  sake  and  of  the  ideals  of  rigid  logic, 
definition,  and  demonstration.  Idealism  appears  to  the  ex- 
tremer  devotees  of  such  a  reaction  as  romanticism  or  mysti- 
cism; yes,  even  at  times  intellectual  dishonesty.  Cold  fact 
and  cold  reason  together  are  almost  irresistible ;  and  if  the 
idealist  follows  them  too  in  his  own  way,  yet  the  very  fact 
that  his  results  claim  a  certain  satisfactoriness  prevents  the 
moral  element  from  standing  out  as  it  does  in  the  correlative 
type.  Independence  of  comfort  is  ever  an  ideal;  independ- 
ence of  any  sort  indeed;  and  both  empiricism  and  ration- 
alism combine,  in  Great  Objectivism,  to  reveal  that  ideal  in 
all  its  austerity  and  authority.  The  fact  that  we  are  to 
expect  no  satisfaction  for  other  human  needs  renders  this 
particular  need  more  dominating. 

Passing  to  the  study  of  the  doctrinal  content  of  modern 
realism,  we  note  that  not  only  as  a  whole,  but  also  in  its 
ramifications,  the  view  is  a  counterpart  of  idealism.  Like 
that  type,  it  divides  into  three.  The  fission  conies  about  in 
the  following  way.  Imbued  as  modern  realism  is  with  the 
spirit  of  objective  investigation,  it  will  tend  to  take  science 
and  the  methods  of  science  as  its  ideal  and  its  model.  Now 
the  realist  finds  two  groups  of  sciences:  the  biological  and 
the  physical,  dealing  with  organic  and  with  inorganic  nature. 
In  the  organic,  mathematical  methods  are  less,  in  the 
inorganic  more,  emphasized;  biology  is  more  purely  experi- 
mental than  mechanics,  less  of  a  deductive  scheme.  Accord- 
ingly a  certain  choice  seems  open.  The  objectivist  may 
select  as  his  ideal  the  less  deductive  and  more  empirical 
method  of  biology,  or  he  may  prefer  the  more  deductive 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  177 

processes  of  physics.  He  will  probably  justify  the  former 
choice  by  asserting  that  all  things  are  in  time,  changing, 
developing,  acting,  and  reacting  with  their  environment;  he 
will  defend  the  latter  choice  by  pointing  to  the  assured  re- 
sults of  mathematics  and  mathematical  physics,  which 
treat  things  atomically  and  statically.  The  former  choice 
will  lead  him  to  an  anti-intellectual  philosophy,  the  latter 
to  a  rationalism  of  a  Platonic,  or  nearly  Platonic  sort.  Con- 
sequently we  find  among  recent  realists  an  opposition  be- 
tween the  disciples  of  pure  logic  and  mathematics,  and  the 
students  of  change,  activity,  and  growth.  But  this  second 
group,  again,  contains  a  division.  Though  its  members 
agree  in  regarding  the  ideal  concepts  of  mathematics  and 
physics  as  artifacts,  or  "  hypostasized  abstractions,"  they 
are  of  two  minds  as  to  the  nature  of  the  flux  in  the  world. 
Some  of  them  define  it  from  the  point  of  view  of  action; 
real  objects  are  stimuli  of  organic  behaviour,  or  goals  of  in- 
quiring thought,  the  environment  to  which  organisms  are 
ever  seeking  to  adjust  themselves.  These  thinkers  are  the 
pragmatists.  Other  empiricists,  however,  no  less  enam- 
oured of  life  and  time,  regard  reality  as  something  not  to  be 
understood  either  by  discursive  intellect  or  by  the  needs  of 
practice,  but  only  by  a  kind  of  sympathetic  insight,  or 
intuition.  These,  led  by  Professor  Bergson,  are  the  intui- 
tionists.  Now  these  three  cults  of  Great  Objectivism,  ra- 
tionalist, pragmatist,  and  intuitionist,  all  professedly  hostile 
to  idealism,  differ  among  themselves  much  as  the  three 
divisions  of  their  common  enemy.  We  recall  how  idealism 
split  into  the  rationalistic,  voluntaristic,  and  aesthetic  fac- 
tions. Natorp,  Cassirer,  and  Cohen  instituted  the  first, 
Miinsterberg,  et  al.,  following  Fichte,  the  second,  and  Bald- 
win, perfecting  the  earlier  work  of  Schelling  and  the  Ro- 
mantic School,  the  third.  Each,  building  upon  the  notion  of 


178  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

the  human  person,  diverged  from  the  rest  according  as  the 
intellect,  or  will,  or  feeling  appeared  to  him  the  basis  of  per- 
sonality. So  here  we  find  a  similar  three  respectively  pre- 
ferred. Though  the  realist  is  not  primarily  interested  in 
mind,  he  has  not  wholly  shaken  off  the  custom  of  idealism. 
He  defines  reality  as  the  kind  of  object  which  intellect  is 
peculiarly  able  to  grasp,  as  made,  so  to  speak,  of  rational 
material,  and  thereby  writes  himself  down  a  devotee  of  exact 
logic  and  the  reality  of  concepts,  i.  e.,  a  Platonic  realist;  or 
again,  he  considers  real  objects  to  be  essentially  stimuli  of 
action  and  things  to  which  we  must  adjust  ourselves,  and 
writes  himself  a  pragmatist;  or,  finally,  he  insists  with  Pro- 
fessor Bergson  that  the  only  true  knowledge  of  reality  is  won 
by  an  intuitive  attitude,  an  immediate  feeling  of  the  stream 
of  events  as  they  bud  and  grow  and  wane.  The  shadow  of 
idealism  hovers  still  in  the  background;  but  we  must  credit 
the  good  intentions  of  the  realists,  and  must  remember  that 
it  is,  after  all,  the  objective  reality  upon  which  their  atten- 
tion is  fixed.  The  issues  between  the  three  camps  will  not  be 
decided  by  examination  of  the  nature  of  personality,  but  by 
study  of  the  nature  of  objects.  Indeed,  the  subjective- 
objective  controversy  will  be  lost  to  view,  and  the  campaigns 
will  be  conducted  upon  new  fields.  Such  questions  as 
Platonic  realism  vs.  nominalism,  determinism  vs.  freedom, 
the  static  vs.  the  dynamic,  will  be  puzzled  out  quite  by  them- 
selves. The  philosophy  of  Great  Objectivism  becomes  a 
gateway  through  which  the  thinker,  hitherto  shut  within 
the  confines  of  the  subjectivistic  purview,  escapes  to  appre- 
ciate, in  however  inadequate  a  manner,  the  wealth  of  other 
aspects  which  the  universe  displays.  But  the  gate  itself,  like 
the  paddock  from  which  it  leads,  has  three  compartments. 
These  three  subtypes  of  Great  Objectivism,  however,  are 
not  exactly  delimited  among  present-day  philosophers.  For 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  179 

one  thing,  the  whole  point  of  view  is  too  new;  it  has  not  yet 
settled  into  cut-and-dried  systems.  Here,  as  always,  we  are 
speaking  of  tendencies  which  seem  to  be  at  work;  and  those 
tendencies  may  never  reach  fulfilment.  The  modern  phi- 
losopher who  revolts  at  idealism  is  afraid  of  system;  he  has 
seen  so  many  systems  disappear.  To  be  sure,  it  would  be  as 
reasonable  to  be  afraid  of  life,  since  so  many  living  beings 
have  died;  but  the  intellect  is  not  always  reasonable.  It 
does  not  easily  distinguish  between  enjoyment  of  truth  and 
unwillingness  to  learn  new  truth;  and  so  it  fears  that  enjoy- 
ment. This  dread  of  system  then  is  perhaps  the  reason  for 
the  absence  of  a  consistently  worked  out  Great  Objectivism, 
in  the  case  of  many  recent  realists,  rationalistic  and  other- 
wise. A  leader  of  the  rationalist  party,  Mr.  B.  Russell, 
argues  against  pragmatism  and  intuitionism,  but  will  not 
reduce  consciousness  to  an  objective  complex,  though  his 
philosophic  twin,  Mr.  G.  E.  Moore,  does  so.  M.  Bergson 
himself  would  not  go  so  far;  he  still  treats  the  mind  as  a 
substantial  thing,  by  no  means  secondary  to  the  external 
world  or  reducible  to  some  function  of  it.  Yet  these  thinkers 
oppose  idealism  and  subjectivism,  and  their  whole  attitude 
is  thoroughly  objective.  The  pragmatists,  WTC  shall  soon 
learn,  usually  do  go  the  length  of  Great  Objectivism;  and 
outside  their  circle  are  the  instances  of  Professors  Holt  and 
Montague,  of  whom  Holt  at  least  has  not  been  afraid  to  es- 
say something  of  an  objective  system.  But  there  is  much 
hesitation  to  proceed  to  extremes.  If  the  conditions  of  the 
environment  permit,  we  may  find,  not  many  decades  hence, 
a  crystallization  of  the  three  tendencies  above  noted, 
comparable  in  articulation  and  mutual  exclusion  to  the 
idealistic  schools.  Nevertheless,  for  the  purpose  we  have 
in  view,  of  considering  the  opposition  between  the  chief 
philosophic  tendencies,  it  will  be  just  to  anatomize,  as  we 


l8o  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

have  done,  Great  Objectivism  and  its  subtypes;  precisely 
as  if  such  anatomy  had  been  already  accepted  by  living 
writers. 

The  general  case  for  Great  Objectivism  appears  to  be 
somewhat  as  follows.  Subjectivism  and  idealism  con- 
sidered mind  as  the  basis  of  all  reality,  i.  e.,  an  ultimate 
thing,  a  substance.  But  substance  is  here  only  a  name,  a 
resort  of  ignorance.  If  mind,  or  soul,  is  to  mean  anything, 
it  must  become  empirically  verifiable,  a  phenomenon  rather 
than  a  "  noumenon,"  viz.,  the  "  stream  of  thought  "  which 
appears  to  introspection.  Not  a  substance  will  be  admitted, 
but  a  complex  of  terms  and  relations  of  a  certain  structure 
and  behaviour,  i.  e.,  a  definable  affair.  Idealism  defined 
objects  in  terms  of  mind,  but  left  mind  indefinable;  we  now 
define  mind.  All  that  is  needed  to  carry  us  to  the  extreme 
position  of  Great  Objectivism  is  to  make  this  demand  for 
definition  thoroughgoing.  If  the  soul  is  abandoned  for  the 
"  stream  of  thought  "  yet  there  lurks  in  the  latter  the  taint 
of  an  irreducible  conscious  quale;  but  this  also  must  be  de- 
fined. As  Berkeley  kept  asking  "  if  there  is  matter  what  do 
you  mean  by  it  ?"  so  they  ask  us  "  if  consciousness  is  any- 
thing in  itself,  what  do  you  mean  by  it  ?  Describe  it!  " 
And  when  we  do  so,  consciousness  as  such,  sui  generis,  seems 
to  go  the  way  of  the  soul.  This  might  have  been  predicted 
beforehand.  If  Kant  was  right  in  asserting  that  the  soul 
lacks  verifiable  content,  then  the  "  steam  of  thought,"  the 
psychical,  has  no  discernible  conscious  quality  to  distinguish 
it  from  the  objective  data.  As  the  psychologist  Wundt  has 
so  carefully  explained,  the  psychical  contents  do  not  differ 
in  their  material  and  composition,  from  the  physical;  the 
only  distinction  is  one  of  point  of  view.  And  if  one  accepts 
the  new-realistic  theory  of  presentative  knowledge,  this 
distinction  also  disappears. 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  l8l 

The  details  of  the  demolition  of  consciousness  display,  as 
we  might  expect,  an  analogy  to  the  argument  of  subjectivism 
against  matter.  There  is  a  negative  side  and  a  positive.  On 
the  negative  side,  the  concept  of  consciousness  is  found  to 
contain  an  antinomy  and  therefore  to  lack  respectable 
status  for  itself;  on  the  positive  side,  it  is  found  that  all  the 
attributes  of  it,  all  there  is  about  it  and  in  it,  can  be  described 
in  terms  of  objects  and  their  relations.  Let  us  begin  with 
the  negative  side. 

THE  ANTINOMY  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

"  Does  Consciousness  Exist  ?  "  asked  James  in  the  title  of 
one  of  his  later  papers.  While  his  own  answer  was  perhaps  a 
little  ambiguous,  probably  his  sympathetic  readers  under- 
stood him  to  answer:  No.  But  we  must  not  be  deluded  by 
words.  Any  reduction  of  a  term  to  lower  terms  may  seem 
to  deprive  it  of  reality;  it  does  not,  of  course,  do  anything  of 
the  kind.  Sugar  is  not  unreal  for  being  C+H+O,  etc.  If 
consciousness  is  reduced  to  a  relation  or  function  of  some- 
thing else,  that  relation,  etc.,  is  still  present  and  influential. 
The  delusion  is  simple,  and  seems  easy  to  avoid.  "  Psycho- 
phobia  "  as  Montague  has  well  called  it  (The  New  Realism, 
p.  269)  is  an  emotional  reaction,  not  an  articulate  doc- 
trine. Philosophers  too  often  adopt  this  method  of  denying 
what  they  believe  themselves  to  have  defined ;  for  instance, 
idealism  has  been  supposed  to  deny  matter,  nominalism  to 
deny  universals,  etc.  Many  such  needless  controversies 
might  have  been  avoided  by  a  little  care  in  expression;  for 
the  exclusiveness  of  either  party  is  quite  gratuitous.  The 
real  issue  for  Great  Objectivism  is  not,  whether  conscious- 
ness exists,  but  whether  it  can  be  exhaustively  defined  in 
terms  of  physical  objects,  or  conceptual  objects,  or  proposi- 
tions, or  relations,  etc.  And  the  antinomies,  if  correct,  will 


1 82  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

at  most  show  that  consciousness  is  not  an  independent  entity. 
The  demolition  of  consciousness  should  be  recognized  to 
mean  only  the  annihilation  of  the  substantive  theory  of 
mind. 

The  antinomy  is  not  directed  against  a  "  transcendental 
ego  "  but  against  the  view  that  the  contents  of  any  one's 
experience  are  irreducibly  "psychical."  For  if  this  is  proved, 
the  basis  on  which  rest  the  transcendental  ego,  and  even 
bolder  reaffirmations  of  the  soul,  is  cut  from  under. 

Like  most  antinomies,  the  argument  is  a  priori.  It  has, 
however,  certain  semi-empirical  forms.  We  state  first  the 
a  priori  formulation. 

Consciousness  is  self-contradictory,  (i)  It  is  somehow 
an  object  of  consciousness,  else  we  could  not  even  mean  it, 
still  less  envisage  it,  as  we  do  in  introspection.  (2)  It  can- 
not be  object  of  consciousness,  for  what  is  seen  must  be 
other  than  the  seeing  of  it.  The  subject  must  be  other  than 
the  object,  whereas  in  self-consciousness  the  subject  is  not 
other  than  the  object. 

The  first  statement  seems  undeniable.  There  is  some- 
thing, a  property,  an  attribute,  anything  you  please,  which 
belongs  to  certain  living  organisms  like  our  own,  and  which 
we  call  consciousness.  However  elusive  it  is,  this  property 
is  not  just  nothing  at  all.  Its  presence  is  sometimes  verifi- 
able :  men  have  it,  stones  have  it  not.  Even  were  it  illusory, 
it  would  at  least  be  object  of  erroneous  thought;  it  is  itself 
the  very  thought  which  entertains  the  error. 

The  second  statement,  if  not  inevitable,  appears  to  have 
so  much  in  its  favour  that  few  would  dare  deny  it.  Every 
case  of  awareness  except  the  one  in  question,  presents  the 
two  distinguishable  sides  of  subject  and  object.  It  matters 
not  whether  we  call  them  substances,  or  object  and  function, 
relation,  or  behaviour;  there  is  in  any  case  a  difference  in 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  183 

meaning  between  an  object  and  the  consciousness  thereof.  It 
would  seem  hardy  indeed  to  doubt  that  so  general  a  property 
of  knowledge  should  in  just  this  one  case  be  wanting. 

The  second  statement  may  also  be  put  in  a  more  empirical 
form.  Consciousness  actually  never  is  the  object  of  con- 
sciousness; for  when  we  "  introspect  "  we  find  only  bodily 
tendencies,  bodily  states  and  movements,  external  objects, 
concepts,  or  other  "  subsisting  "  things.  I  see  not  my  seeing 
of  the  table  but  the  table;  and  the  most  prolonged  intro- 
spection finds  nothing  else,  unless  it  be  the  strain  of  eye- 
muscles  and  accompanying  bodily  phenomena,  or  other 
objects  called  up  by  "  association  of  ideas."  These  other 
objects  are  not  "  images  "  but  external  things,  however:  if 
the  table  leads  me  to  think  of  Julius  Caesar,  it  is  —  for  the 
realist  —  Caesar  himself,  that  past  being,  whom  my  thought 
embraces.  There  are  no  "  mental  images  ";  all  content  of 
mind  is  part  of  some  objective  world.  And  what  is  true  of 
thought  is  true  of  other  modes  of  consciousness.  I  do  not 
feel  my  feeling  of  the  pain;  however  much  I  turn  inward  my 
glance,  I  find  only  the  pain-quality  and  the  simultaneous 
bodily  set.  Hume  declared  that  he  could  find,  in  the  stream 
of  his  own  experience,  no  soul  or  self;  it  is  reserved  for  the 
modern  to  exhume  the  agnosticism,  in  the  claim  that  he  finds 
no  consciousness  as  such  at  all.  And  even  the  idealist 
Schopenhauer  said  much  the  same:  "  as  soon  as  we  turn 
into  ourselves  .  .  .  and  seek  for  once  to  know  ourselves 
fully  by  means  of  introspective  reflection,  we  are  lost  in  a 
bottomless  void,  —  we  find  ourselves  like  the  hollow  glass 
globe,  from  out  of  which  a  voice  speaks  whose  cause  is  not 
to  be  found  in  it,  and  whereas  we  desired  to  comprehend 
ourselves,  we  find,  with  a  shudder,  nothing  but  a  vanishing 
spectre."  (Schopenhauer,  World  as  Will  and  Idea,  Bk.  3, 
Eng.  tr.,  p.  358,  footnote.) 


184  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

If  the  antithesis,  when  couched  in  this  empirical  language, 
is  closely  studied,  a  certain  arbitrariness  appears.  It  pur- 
ports to  deny  consciousness,  but  it  might  just  as  well  be 
turned  about  and  made  to  deny  objectivity.  If  we  say  the 
consciousness  of  the  tree  is  naught  besides  the  tree,  why 
not  as  truly  say  with  Berkeley  that  the  tree  is  naught  be- 
sides the  consciousness  of  it  ?  If  we  show  that  there  is 
nothing  more  about  the  knowledge  of  a  tree  than  the  tree 
and  what  is  known  thereof,  might  we  not  as  rightfully  de- 
clare that  there  is  naught  in  the  tree  besides  our  knowledge 
of  it,  and  the  content  of  that  knowledge  ?  If  there  is  no 
special  conscious  quale  over  and  above  the  objects  of  which 
we  are  conscious,  there  is  equally  no  special  objective  quale 
over  and  above  the  mind's  contents.  Did  not  Kant  point 
out  that  there  is  no  describable  difference  between  an  idea 
and  the  reality  of  it  ?  It  would  seem  as  if  the  antithesis 
proved  that  consciousness  and  its  object  are  through  and 
through  identical;  and  this  surely  does  not  militate  against 
self -consciousness,  but  rather  shows  its  plausibility.  What  is 
needed,  to  enforce  the  contradiction,  is  a  proof  that  we  must 
prefer  the  objective  rendering  rather  than  the  Berkeleyan 
rendering  of  this  identity.  Now  Great  Objectivism  does 
attempt  to  do  this  in  its  second  and  positive  argument, 
wherein  it  would  reduce  the  subject  to  objective  terms  and 
account  for  all  of  its  properties  thereby.  That  argument  we 
have  soon  to  consider;  without  it  however,  the  antithesis  is 
quashed  and  the  antinomy-argument  seems  to  evaporate. 
As  subjectivism  was  unable  to  justify  itself  without  appeal- 
ing to  a  Great  Self  which  would  account  for  the  properties  of 
objective  reality,  so  objectivism  is  unable  to  justify  itself 
until  it  can  furnish  an  objective  definition  of  consciousness 
which  will  explain  the  properties  of  mind.  Not  by  a  reductio 
ad  absurdum  of  consciousness,  but  by  a  fertile  objective 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  185 

metaphysics,  able  to  generate  mind  and  its  attributes,  can 
Great  Objectivism  alone  succeed.  Reductiones  of  this  sort 
are,  indeed,  only  the  argument  from  damnation,  employed 
by  subjectivism,  over  again.  If  we  are  conscious  of  our  own 
consciousness  and  at  the  same  time  cannot  be,  no  amount  of 
reduction  of  consciousness  to  something  else  will  solve  the 
difficulty.  For,  suppose  consciousness  were  defined  as  a 
certain  relationship  among  objects:  call  it  /  (o).  Where 
this  peculiar  /  is  found,  there  we  have  consciousness,  and 
where  it  is  not  found  there  we  have  it  not.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  non-conscious  objects,  this /is  as  unique  as  an  ulti- 
mate substance  would  be.  Its  relational  or  functional  char- 
acter will  not  save  the  differentia  of  consciousness  from  being 
just  as  irreducible  and  opaque  as  an  old-fashioned  soul.  And 
it  will  still  have  the  property  of  being  its  own  object.  If  to 
be  conscious  of  a  certain  thing  is/  (o)  then  to  be  conscious  of 
that  consciousness  is  /  (/  (o)  ) ;  and  if  /  (/)  is  an  impossi- 
bility we  are  no  better  off  than  before.  Let  us  not  be  de- 
ceived into  thinking  relation,  or  function,  a  magic  talisman. 
These  terms  are  useful  in  analysis,  and  necessary  to  enlarge 
our  information;  but  they  simply  restate  in  the  above  case 
under  relational  form  the  same  old  contradiction  as  the  sub- 
stantial form  presented.  We  saw  a  similar  thing  in  Chapter 
III  when  we  considered  the  Kantian  antinomies  as  evidence 
for  subjectivism;  we  there  learned  that  subjectivism  does 
not  at  all  remove  their  force.  In  general,  it  is  true  that  no 
contradiction  is  solved  unless  it  is  solved  directly  and  as  it 
stands,  in  just  the  aspect  and  environment  in  which  it  arises. 
The  endeavour  to  solve  it  by  resorting  to  a  new  point  of 
view,  or  a  new  sort  of  description,  relational,  synthetic,  or 
whatever  you  please,  is  futile. 

Of  course,  one  may  try  to  escape  the  above  antinomy  by 
denying  the  thesis.    One  may  say  that  we  are  not  conscious 


1 86  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

of  consciousness.  In  that  case  we  ask,  "  how  can  you  at- 
tempt to  define  something  that  you  are  not  thinking  of  ?  " 
For  that  is  what  Great  Objectivism  does  attempt. 

But  such  considerations  as  we  have  been  urging,  though 
we  believe  them  to  be  fundamental  and  at  bottom  the  really 
decisive  ones,  seem  to  many  thinkers  too  formal ;  the  advo- 
cates of  Great  Objectivism  insist  that  they  offer  us  empirical 
and  specific  evidence.  Let  us  then  pass  to  the  more  concrete 
and  special  cases  of  the  above  antinomy.  So  far  as  we  know, 
all  reduce  to  one  typical  case,  the  criticism  of  introspection. 
Introspection,  it  is  claimed,  is  self-contradictory.  For  it  im- 
plies unconscious  consciousness  (B.  H.  Bode,  Journal  of 
Philosophy,  1912,  p.  509).  Looking  back  upon  my  mental 
state  just  past,  I  find  that  I  was  aware  of  the  clock  ticking, 
though  I  did  not  at  the  time  know  that  I  heard  it.  Now, 
how  could  that  auditory  datum  have  been  in  my  conscious- 
ness if  I  was  not  aware  of  it  ?  Can  I  be  conscious  of  some- 
thing of  which  I  am  not  aware  ?  It  seems  a  clear  reductio  ad 
absurdum.  The  "  fringe  "  of  consciousness  is  a  delusion,  if  it 
is  understood  as  a  reservoir  of  these  unconscious-conscious 
contents;  it  must  be  reinterpreted  as  a  sort  of  physical  be- 
haviour —  or  something  else.  Introspection  is  not  really 
employed  at  all ;  it  is,  in  a  case  like  this,  a  memory  of  a 
just  past  bodily  "  set "  or  tendency  to  react  in  a  certain 
way,  etc. 

Notice  that  this  argument  does  not  merely  claim  that 
every  psychosis  has  its  characteristic  bodily  behaviour,  and 
that  the  best  means  of  describing  it  is  to  study  that  be- 
haviour. It  goes  further;  it  would  ruin  introspection  be- 
yond saving.  And  it  seems  to  depend  upon  a  confusion.  I 
was  aware,  perhaps,  of  the  tick  of  the  clock,  but  I  was  not 
aware  that  I  was  aware.  Introspection  a  moment  later 
furnishes  the  knowledge  that  I  was  aware  of  the  tick.  In- 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  187 

trospection  is  a  judgment  upon  a  judgment.  The  alleged 
antinomy  confuses  awareness  with  awareness  of  awareness, 
consciousness  with  self-consciousness.  To  assume  outright 
that  what  introspection  discovers  in  consciousness  must 
have  been  there  without  our  being  aware  of  it,  is  unqualified 
dogmatism.  And  we  could  hardly  help  mistrusting  the 
whole  plea,  if  only  because  psychologists  have  by  intro- 
spection discovered  some  unquestionable  facts.  Professor 
Holt,  indeed,  one  of  the  extremest  of  Great  Objectivists, 
and  no  friend  of  introspection,  has  himself  answered  the 
objection  in  a  similar  way  to  this  (Concept  of  Consciousness, 
p.  192). 

Probably  the  road  was  prepared  for  such  antipathy  to- 
ward the  psychical  by  certain  doctrines  of  idealists.  They 
have  occasionally  declared  mind  to  be  non-quantitative,  not 
open  to  scientific  description,  private,  beyond  the  province 
of  discursive  knowledge.  We  here  recall  Royce's  doctrine 
of  personal  individuality  as  indescribable,  a  volitional  rather 
than  an  intellectual  category;  Miinsterberg's  thesis  that  a 
person  is  a  will-attitude  and  that  sensations  have  no  quan- 
tity; in  fact,  the  whole  idealistic  tendency  to  put  mind 
above  rather  than  alongside  the  realm  of  objects.  The  tend- 
ency has  even  permeated  the  details  of  psychological  de- 
scription. We  may  instance  James'  claim  that  similarity  is 
not  reducible  to  partial  identity,  that  the  taste  of  lemonade 
is  not  the  taste  of  lemon  plus  the  taste  of  sugar,  that  the 
description,  given  by  a  friend,  of  a  certain  family  as  having 
"  blotting-paper  voices  "  "  though  immediately  felt  to  be 
apposite,  defies  the  utmost  power  of  analysis,"  etc.  Of  the 
same  tenor  is  the  general  view  that  every  conscious  quality 
is  simple,  unanalysable.  Such  a  position  owes  its  plausi- 
bility to  an  appearance  of  having  made  a  distinction  which 
its  deniers  overlook.  Lemonade,  it  says,  as  physical  is 


1 88  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

lemon-juice  plus  sugar,  but  we  must  distinguish  the  sensa- 
tion of  lemonade  from  the  liquid  itself.  So  too  the  conscious- 
ness of  similarity  must  be  distinguished  from  the  similar 
objects,  etc.,  etc.  But  the  advantage  —  as  often  with  those 
who  deny  an  assertion  by  making  a  distinction  —  is  only 
apparent.  In  making  the  distinction,  they  overlook  a 
deeper  identity.  If  the  taste  of  the  lemonade  does  not  reveal 
the  composition  of  the  lemonade,  how  is  it  a  guide  to  the 
truth  ?  Consciousness  of  an  object  is  in  fact  by  the  realists 
asserted  to  be  that  very  object  itself.  In  the  whole  position, 
their  opponents  have  displayed  an  enmity  toward  analysis 
which  has  no  grounds  whatsoever,  and  which  is  now  justly 
reacting  upon  them.  The  dictum  of  irreducibility  is  a 
brutumftdmen,  a  "  Thou  shalt  not  "  from  the  skies,  an  order 
to  suppress  the  instinct  of  inquiry.  Sooner  or  later  it  must 
have  been  questioned,  and  as  soon  as  questioned,  denied; 
for  we  cannot  stop  anywhere  in  the  effort  to  analyze.  The 
realist,  then,  takes  a  fair  revenge  when  he  says  that  this 
mysterious  quality  of  consciousness,  which  puts  it  and  its 
states  beyond  the  pale  of  analysis  and  definition,  renders  it, 
for  intelligence,  nil.  What  cannot  be  described  or  explained 
or  understood,  plays  no  part  in  the  world  of  reason;  no 
satisfaction  can  be  afforded  by  it  to  that  instinct  which 
would  comprehend  the  scheme  of  things.  "  If  this  occult 
thing,  consciousness,  means  anything,"  they  say,  "  whereby 
it  is  distinguished  from  nothing  at  all,  tell  us  what  it  means; 
do  not  say  only  that  you  feel  it,  intuit  it,  will  it."  But  if  it 
cannot  be  analyzed,  it  might  just  as  well  be  dropped.  The 
scientific  attitude  which  the  realist  has  adopted,  urges  him 
to  abolish  this  enemy  of  understanding.  And  when  it  occurs 
to  him  that  with  the  disappearance  of  this  indissoluble  surd, 
there  disappear  also  those  vexed  problems  of  parallelism, 
interaction,  automatism,  and  other  issues  which  centre 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  189 

about  the  relation  of  mind  to  body,  we  shall  find  it  easy  not 
to  blame  him  for  rejecting  the  belief  in  mind  sui  generis. 

All  this  hostility  might  have  been  avoided,  had  certain 
idealists  and  idealistic  psychologists  not  placed  mind  on  a 
pedestal  and  crowned  it  with  a  halo.  Not  that  the  idealists 
have  consistently  done  that;  they  have  vouchsafed  to  us 
incidentally  plenty  of  traits  wherewith  to  define  mind.  But 
the  human  tendency  to  prefer  one  to  another,  to  cut  off  the 
low  from  the  high,  to  put  the  Ultimate  beyond  the  reach  of 
humble  intelligence,  will  crop  out  here  and  there;  and  its 
dominance  leads  to  revolt,  and  the  overthrow  of  idealism's 
excessive  pretensions.  Herein  we  see  once  more  how  great  a 
part  emotion  plays  in  the  philosophical  world. 

But  to  return:  the  negative  case  for  Great  Objectivism  is 
by  itself  indecisive.  All  its  force  turns  upon  the  success  of 
the  positive  side,  just  as  with  idealism  all  turned  upon  the 
fertility  of  the  Great  Self  to  account  for  the  specific  nature 
of  objects.  What  then  does  our  present  type  have  to  say 
about  the  existence  and  the  character  of  those  affairs  which 
we  call  minds  ?  Can  it  account  for  them  ?  Upon  its  ability 
to  do  this  rests  whatever  justice  there  is  in  its  claim  to  be  a 
genuine  philosophical  theory. 

The  objective  formula  for  consciousness,  from  which 
should  be  deduced  the  attributes  of  that  state,  is  not  a  mat- 
ter of  general  consensus  among  recent  realists.  This  was  also 
the  case  with  idealism.  The  Great  Self  was  here  a  will, 
there  an  intellect,  or  again  an  evaluator.  We  may  however 
consider  each  realistic  formula  on  its  own  merits.  So  far  as 
I  know,  the  following  include  all  that  has  been  furnished  up 
to  the  present  time  (1915). 

Consciousness  is  the  real  potentiality  of  an  event  or  fact 
(physical  or  conceptual)  (Montague,  The  New  Realism, 
p .  2  8 1 ) .  "  Consciousness  is  the  potential  or  implicative  presence 


190  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

of  a  thing  at  a  space  or  time  in  which  that  thing  is  not  actually 
present"  For  instance,  in  the  case  of  memory:  I  recall  my 
first  day  at  school,  and  thereby  that  past  event  becomes 
present  here  and  now  to  my  mind.  Yet  it  is  not  present  in 
the  space-and-time  world;  it  long  since  departed  from  that 
region.  The  brain-state  in  my  head  is  not  itself  that  past 
event,  but  is  an  effect  of  it,  indicates  it  as  effect  implies 
cause.  To  say  that  that  past  event  is  implicatively  or  poten- 
tially present  is  to  say,  then,  that  my  brain  is  thinking  of 
and  remembering  it.  What  is  physically  an  impossibility  - 
the  recurrence  of  that  first  school-day  —  is  enabled  to  be- 
come actual  because  a  new  and  unique  point  of  view,  quite 
foreign  to  the  physical,  is  introduced,  viz.,  that  of  potential 
or  implicative  reality.  And  the  new  point  of  view  enables 
this  peculiar  sort  of  presence-through-absence  which  dis- 
tinguishes consciousness  to  be  realized.  Thus  by  means  of 
a  combination  of  the  category  of  potentiality  or  implication 
with  that  of  physical  existence,  we  define  consciousness. 
The  same  method  may  be  illustrated  in  the  case  of  percep- 
tion. A  distant  object,  say  a  star,  is  perceived  by  me.  But 
the  star  is  not  here,  not  in  my  brain  or  my  body  or  the 
near-by  space,  and  it  may  be  even  non-existent  by  the  time 
its  light  reaches  me;  yet  in  consciousness,  we  say,  it  is  some- 
how here.  How  can  this  be  ?  Apply  the  category  of  impli- 
cation. My  brain-state  is  the  effect  of  the  light  radiating 
from  the  star;  i.  e.,  it  implies  the  latter  as  its  source.  Now 
regard  that  latter  as  implicatively  or  potentially  present  in 
my  brain.  This  enables  us  to  solve  the  contradiction  be- 
tween the  absence  of  the  star  in  my  brain  and  the  presence 
of  it;  it  does  so  by  generating  a  new  standpoint  which  is 
defined  by  the  union  of  "  potential  "  and  "  physical,"  viz., 
consciousness.  From  a  logical  point  of  view  this  is  as  elegant 
as  anything  in  the  Hegelian  deduction  of  categories.  (We 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  191 

regard  this  as  a  commendation,  not  an  aspersion.)  It  is 
empirically  based,  and  seems  to  guarantee  the  very  thing 
desired.  Does  it  then  account  for  the  fact  that  there  is  con- 
sciousness and  that  it  has  this  and  that  specific  property 
such  as  connation,  affection,  judgment,  error,  etc.  ? 

We  are  not  here  assessing  the  truth  of  the  above  definition, 
but  its  sufficiency.  We  may  believe  that  Professor  Montague 
has  laid  his  finger  upon  a  genuine  attribute  of  consciousness. 
It  is  quite  another  question,  whether  or  not  he  has  succeeded 
in  undermining  the  idealistic  system  by  reversing  it  and  re- 
ducing mind  wholly  to  terms  of  objects.  The  latter  question 
only  concerns  us  here. 

Notice  the  way  in  which  the  definition  was  obtained.  We 
have  compared  it  with  the  Hegelian  method.  From  an 
antinomy  by  a  synthesis  a  new  conception  is  formed  which 
will  solve  the  contradiction.  We  believe  that  this  is  no 
accident  of  exposition ;  for  we  find  the  same  failing  that  was 
formerly  alleged  to  infect  the  Hegelian  deduction.  Suppose 
two  categories  apply  to  the  same  subject-matter,  and  at  the 
same  time  contradict  each  other.  This  fact  does  not  of  itself 
compel  them  to  unite  in  a  third  or  "  higher  synthesis."  Per- 
haps they  do  unite,  perhaps  there  is  some  discoverable  char- 
acter of  the  said  subject-matter  which  actually  exemplifies 
both  aspects  in  such  a  light  that  we  can  understand  how  it 
is  that  they  do  not  really  conflict.  If  this  is  the  case,  there 
is  a  real "  higher  synthesis  " ;  but  it  is  not  due  to  the  activity 
of  the  conflicting  categories  that  this  synthesis  occurs.  It  is 
simply  an  ultimate  datum,  quite  unaccounted-for.  And 
recent  Hegelianism  accepts  this  point,  no  longer  regarding 
the  deduction  as  a  productive  affair.  In  mathematics,  when 
it  is  desired  to  prove  that  two  postulates  are  not  contradic- 
tory, the  accepted  procedure  is  to  show  that  some  entity 
exists  which  satisfies  them  both.  A  fact  which  is  to  be  ac 


192  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

cepted,  not  a  deduction  from  either  or  both,  is  the  solution. 
So  here  it  happens  that  there  is  something  —  consciousness 
—  which  demonstrably  contains  the  two  conflicting  cate- 
gories of  presence  and  absence.  But  there  is  nothing  in  the 
nature  of  objects  to  imply  that  this  is  possible,  or  to  make 
clear  how  it  is  done.  A  new  creation,  as  it  were  a  higher 
dimension  than  space-and-time,  must  first  be  begged  before 
the  synthesis  can  be  accomplished.  This  higher  dimension 
or  synthesis  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  objects  a  surd.  Of 
course  we  have  here  been  speaking  of  material  objects  and 
things  in  space  and  time;  but  the  same  reasoning  applies, 
mutatis  mutandis,  to  concepts,  relations,  or  other  non-ma- 
terial objects.  In  the  actual  existence  of  consciousness  the 
deduction  has  reached  its  critical  point.  That  existence  can 
indeed  be  defined  in  objective  terms,  just  as  for  subjectivism 
all  objects  could  be  denned  in  terms  of  the  subject;  but  the 
definition  does  not  guarantee  the  actuality  of  the  definitum. 
The  dualism  of  object  and  consciousness  remains  ultimate; 
the  definition,  while  no  doubt  true  —  as  true  as  subjectivism 
was  —  does  not  account  for  its  appearance  in  a  material 
world. 

Stating  this  criticism  more  formally,  we  may  put  it  thus. 
Granted  the  objective  world,  a  congeries  of  things,  relations, 
categories,  etc.  Among  these  are  found  the  following :  pres- 
ent realities,  absent  realities,  potentialities.  When  these 
three  are  joined  in  one  conception,  we  have  that  unique  and 
immaterial  thing  known  as  consciousness.  But  who  has 
made  plain  the  occasion  and  manner  of  the  junction  ?  For 
aught  that  is  shown  to  the  contrary,  it  might  be  the  miracu- 
lous act  of  God  that  effects  it  —  or  it  might  be  a  fortuitous 
freak  of  nature,  or  the  birth  of  the  soul;  for  it  is  no  less 
mysterious  than  these.  In  any  case,  something  new  in 
principle  is  invoked,  something  not  drawn  from  the  original 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  193 

objective  order,  viz.,  the  combination  itself.  "  Nil  in  mente 
quod  non  an  tea  in  rebus  fuit,"  we  might  say,  "  nisi  mens 
ipse."  Did  not  Kant  himself  with  his  "  Synthetic  Unity  of 
Apperception  "  or  power  of  combining  the  absent  with  the 
present,  have  much  the  same  result  as  Dr.  Montague  ?  Of 
course  we  may  be  accused  here  of  captiousness.  Ought  we 
to  demand  at  one  stroke  a  full-fledged  explanation  of  the 
origin  and  nature  of  mind  ?  Surely  it  is  all  we  have  a  right 
to  expect,  to  know  that  consciousness  means  potential  pres- 
ence of  the  absent.  Now  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  we  are 
not  quarrelling  with  the  truth,  or  the  interest,  of  the  defini- 
tion in  hand.  It  is  its  service  to  Great  Objectivism,  its 
ability  to  refute  subjectivism  and  dualism,  that  concerns  us. 
And  on  this  point  we  cannot  hesitate  to  say  that  its  descrip- 
tion of  mind  leaves  us  with  as  ultimate  a  dualism  as  any  that 
could  be  conceived.  It  simply  redefines  the  old  dualism,  as 
Spinoza  redefined  the  dualism  of  matter  and  mind  by  dub- 
bing them  two  aspects  of  one  substance.  The  one  thing  that 
would  make  Great  Objectivism  a  fruitful  view  would  be,  an 
explanation  of  that  combination  of  objective  entities  which 
makes  up  consciousness.  As  subjectivism  failed  to  throw 
light  on  the  fact  of  external  reality,  as  idealism  was  unable 
to  generate  the  specific  properties  of  the  world,  so  this  new 
system  has  no  solvent  for  the  surd  of  mind.  It  is  able  to 
bring  mind  successfully  under  its  formula,  but  not  to  state 
why  there  should  be  such  an  unique  being  as  can  confer 
presence  upon  the  absent  and  reality  upon  the  unreal.  For 
Great  Objectivism,  mind  remains  a  miracle. 

Or  the  same  point  may  be  expressed  in  a  concreter  way. 
If  consciousness  is  the  potential  presence  of  something  not 
really  present,  how  does  it  differ  from  potential  energy  as 
usually  employed,  say,  in  physics  ?  The  potential  energy 
of  a  weight  resting  on  a  table  is  treated  by  that  science  as 


194  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

something  which  would  under  suitable  conditions  turn 
into  a  downward  motion.  It  is  not  at  the  moment  such 
motion,  for  that  motion  does  not  exist.  But  in  conscious- 
ness there  is  a  certain  real  presence  about  the  perceived 
object,  or  the  remembered  event,  which  the  term  potenti- 
ality does  not  sufficiently  convey.  Professor  Montague 
indeed  characterizes  his  own  view  as  "  the  theory  that — The 
potentiality  of  the  physical  is  the  actuality  of  the  psychical ..." 
(op.  cit.,  p.  281).  Yet  that  actuality  remains  unexplained 
and  undefined  upon  objective  grounds.  How  should  there 
arise  an  entity,  mind,  which  is  able  to  confer  actuality  upon 
what  is  physically  only  potential  ? 

The  crux  of  this  difficulty  is  found  in  that  which  from  the 
point  of  view  of  physical  objects  is  the  subjective  thing  par 
excellence,  viz.,  error.  There  is,  on  the  whole,  agreement  be- 
tween two  of  the  joint  authors  of  the  volume  entitled  The 
New  Realism  (Professors  Montague  and  Pitkin) ,  that  errors 
arise  because  the  brain-state  may  be  the  effect  of  any  one  of 
many  external  causes.  Thus,  the  visual  star,  the  one  that  I 
see  —  the  disturbance  of  the  visual  tract  in  the  brain  - 
may  be  due  to  a  material  star  that  has  since  "  gone  out  "  or 
a  star  that  still  blazes,  or  to  a  diseased  cornea,  or  pressure 
upon  the  optic  nerve.  Any  one  of  these  is,  in  Montague's 
use  of  the  term,  implied  by  the  disturbance  of  the  visual 
area.  Now  "when  .  .  .  the  cerebral  implicate  .  .  .  happens 
not  to  have  been  the  actual  cause,  or  happens  not  to  exist, 
then  we  shall  have  apprehension  of  what  is  unreal,  which 
is  false  knowledge,  or  error"  (The  New  Realism,  p.  287). 
Error  involves  the  selection  of  one  implicate  and  exclusion 
of  the  rest.  But  we  are  not  told  why  any  one  implicate 
must  be  chosen  and  the  others  rejected.  To  be  sure,  con- 
sciousness is  selective :  but  that  is  one  of  its  specific  proper- 
ties which  the  above  definition  has  not  accounted  for.  Why 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  195 

should  not  consciousness  be  content  with  having  all,  or  at 
least  several,  implicates  present  at  once,  with  no  choice  made 
between  them  ?  It  is  the  actuality  of  error  as  a  conscious 
state,  the  particular  fact  that  one  potentiality  of  the  many 
somehow  becomes  present  while  the  rest  do  not,  that  is  the 
real  thing  to  be  explained.  To  explain  this  we  need  to  be 
provided  already  with  the  psychical  field;  for  therein,  it 
seems,  alone  can  errors  reside.  If  we  have  not  accounted 
for  the  fact  of  this  field,  how  shall  we  explain  then  the  fact 
of  error  ?  We  are  left  with  the  dualism  as  before. 

Dr.  Montague's  contribution  to  the  definition  of  mind 
we  believe  to  be  valuable.  It  is  verifiable  and  therefore  ir- 
refutable. In  particular,  its  revival  of  the  now  unfashion- 
able notion  potentiality  seems  to  be  a  piece  of  common 
justice  to  that  neglected  concept.  (Cf.  Ch.  X.)  Perhaps 
the  use  of  "  implication  "  to  cover  both  the  relation  between 
effect  and  cause,  and  potentiality,  is  a  little  vague;  perhaps 
it  would  have  been  better  to  define  implication  more  care- 
fully or  even  to  show  that  it  is  indefinable  (as  some  realists 
claim).  But  these  are  at  most  faults  of  detail.  Meanwhile, 
we  must  admit  that  his  essay  points  not  toward  objective 
monism  but  toward  dualism;  and  there  seems  to  be  some 
reason  for  thinking  that  he  is  himself  consciously  a  dualist  — 
which  result  would  be  a  confirmation  of  our  criticism. 

More  consistently  true  to  Great  Objectivism  is  the  work 
of  Professor  Holt.  This  author  unequivocally  announces 
his  objectivism:  "it  is  not  that  we  have  two  contrasted 
worlds,  the  '  objective  '  and  the  '  subjective  ' ;  there  is 
but  one  world,  the  objective,  and  that  which  we  have 
hitherto  not  understood,  have  dubbed  therefore  the  '  sub- 
jective '  are  the  subtler  workings  of  integrated  objective 
mechanisms"  (The  Freudian  Wish,  p.  93).  And  in  his  more 
extensive  treatment  of  the  topic  (Concept  of  Conscious- 


196  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

ness,  p.  57)  he  brings  out  the  greatness  of  his  objectivism: 
"...  this  volume,  in  spite  of  its  apparent  digressiveness, 
aims  at  nothing  but  a  deductive  account  of  the  concept  of 
consciousness." 

In  his  essay,  The  Place  of  Illusory  Experience  in  a  Realistic 
World  (The  New  Realism,  pp.  303-373),  Holt  shows  how  all 
conscious  contents  are  quite  objective.  Errors,  viewed  in  a 
broad  sense,  are  not  the  prerogative  of  mind.  The  physical 
world  also  errs:  photographs  are  not  true  to  the  object, 
images  projected  through  a  lens  or  a  stereoscope  distort  the 
thing  imaged;  and  a  wealth  of  similar  discrepancies  is  im- 
pressively catalogued.  Secondary  qualities,  likewise,  are 
not  the  deliverances  of  some  subjective  factor,  such  as  the 
"  specific  energy  "  of  the  nerve-fibers;  they  are  groupings 
and  form-qualities  of  physical  stimuli,  more  or  less  dense 
fusions  of  objectively  given  data.  That  is,  they  are  not  in 
any  way  due  to  activity  of  mind.  They  arise  from  the  fact 
that  the  sense-organ  cannot  register  with  sufficient  distinct- 
ness the  many  small  stimuli  which  come  from  the  object; 
the  succession  of  light-waves  or  sound-waves  or  heat-waves 
is  too  rapid  for  our  organs  to  adapt  themselves  thereto.  The 
result  is  that  the  stimuli  come  into  the  nervous  system  fused 
into  a  unity  which  has  a  Gestaltqualitat  quite  different  from 
that  of  the  physical  succession  of  them.  The  secondary 
qualities  "  are  all  form-qualities  in  which  the  temporal  sub- 
divisions are  so  small  that  the  time-sense  cannot  discrimi- 
nate them,  whereas  the  frequency-magnitude  or  the  density 
still  remains  perceivable."  (NewRealism^p.^S.)  Now  these 
densities  or  fusions  are  simply  functions  of  the  objective 
physical  facts;  functions  which  depend  upon  the  receptive 
capacity  of  the  bodily  nerve-endings.  Notice  the  inductive 
character  of  this  description;  it  is  more  apparent  than  in 
the  one  given  above.  The  supposedly  subjective  states, 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  197 

viz.,  the  secondary  qualities,  are  examined  in  the  environ- 
ment in  which  they  occur  —  the  body  and  the  objective 
stimuli  —  and  then  the  reason  why  they  appear  to  be 
"  subjective,"  why  they  differ  from  the  other  stimuli  which 
are  given  as  they  are,  is  empirically  explained.  Thus  a  large 
part  of  what  we  call  the  subjective  is  accounted  for  upon  a 
physical  basis. 

But  what  of  our  perception  of  several  primary  qualities 
together  ?  It  is  surely  a  subjective  event.  Yes,  but  the 
subjectivity  lies  only  in  the  fact  that  these  qualities  are  at 
one  and  the  same  moment  selected  out  by  the  nervous  sys- 
tem as  objects  to  which  it  will  respond.  The  subjective 
aspect,  or  consciousness,  here  appears  to  be  nothing  but  the 
fact  that  a  cross-section  is  carved  from  out  the  matrix  of  all 
objective  reality.  "  Any  class  that  is  formed  from  the  mem- 
bers of  a  given  manifold  by  some  selective  principle  which  is 
independent  of  the  principles  which  have  organized  the 
manifold  may  be  called  a  cross-section.  And  such  a  thing  is 
consciousness  or  mind,  —  a  cross-section  of  the  universe, 
selected  by  the  nervous  system.  The  elements  or  parts  of 
the  universe  selected,  and  thus  included  in  the  class  mind, 
are  all  elements  or  parts  to  which  the  nervous  system  makes 
a  specific  response.  It  responds  thus  specifically  to  a  spatial 
object  if  it  brings  the  body  to  touch  that  object,  to  point 
toward  it,  to  copy  it,  and  so  forth  ..."  (Concept  of  Con- 
sciousness, p.  353).  But  the  cross-sections  are  not  limited  to 
the  physical  universe.  In  fact,  Holt  considers  that  universe 
to  be  only  a  part  of  the  total  complex  of  objects.  He  calls 
this  total  complex  "neutral"  because  it  is  in  itself  the  ulti- 
mate material  out  of  which  all  things  are  made ;  all  things 
real  or  unreal,  particular  or  universal,  true  or  false,  good  or 
bad,  physical  or  conceptual.  These  neutral  objects  subsist 
rather  than  exist;  to  be  real  is  a  qualification  of  to  be.  "A 


198  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

mind  or  consciousness  is  a  class  or  group  of  [neutral]  entities 
within  the  subsisting  universe,  as  a  physical  object  is  an- 
other class  or  group  "  (p.  373).  Thus  his  Great  Objectivism 
is  not  materialism. 

How  then  is  that  peculiarly  subjective  thing,  human 
error,  explained  ?  Thus :  error  is  simply  a  case  of  contradic- 
tion. In  the  physical  world,  we  find  contradiction  when  two 
bodies  moving  in  opposite  directions  collide.  In  the  realm 
of  consciousness,  we  find  it  when  two  assertions  deny  each 
other.  The  assertions  subsist  together;  they  are  objective 
facts  which  do  not  exist  but  none  the  less  are,  and  which  be- 
have toward  each  other  in  a  way  quite  analogous  to  the 
behaviour  of  clashing  bodies.  In  a  world  where  many  things 
conflict,  we  should  expect  to  find,  under  the  head  of  con- 
scious states,  errors. 

Any  namable,  distinguishable  sense-element,  any  affec- 
tive tone,  however  private  it  seems  to  be,  is  not  merely  pri- 
vate; the  same  intensity  of  pain  felt  by  you  and  me  is  one 
and  the  same  intensity,  common  to  both ;  the  pleasantness  of 
a  sunny  landscape  is  in  the  landscape,  for  it  is  true  of  it. 
"  Pleasure  and  pain  are  neutral  entities  and,  both  in  theory 
and  practice,  are  as  amenable  to  communication  and  logical 
handling  as  are  the  concepts  of  acceleration  and  TT."  (Con- 
cept of  Consciousness,  p.  in.)  And  of  the  emotions:  "in 
so  far  as  we  know  about  them  at  all  they  are  in  the  same 
way  neutral "  (ibid.}. 

In  fact,  the  whole  theory  of  "  representative  "  perception, 
which  allows  a  distinctly  subjective  state  to  exist  beside  the 
thing  perceived,  must  in  this  view  be  replaced  by  a  "  pre- 
sentative  "  theory.  "  Nothing  can  represent  a  thing  but 
that  thing  itself.  And  if  anybody  has  ever  assented  to  the 
representative  theory  of  knowledge  it  is  only  because  he  has 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  199 

not  examined  the  concept  of  representation.  The  theory 
plays  altogether  fast  and  loose  with  this  concept.  Typical 
and  indisputable  cases  of  representation  are  readily  found. 
A  photograph  represents  a  landscape :  a  sample  represents  a 
web  of  cloth:  a  statesman  represents  a  borough.  But  the 
photograph  does  not  represent  the  landscape  in  all  respects ; 
it  leaves  out,  for  instance,  the  features  of  colour  and  size. 
The  photograph  of  a  distant  mountain  top  gives  no  clue  to 
the  size  of  the  mountain.  It  represents  the  landscape  in  the 
one  respect  of  contour,  and  does  so  by  being  in  that  one  re- 
spect identical  with  the  thing  it  represents.  If  with  a  per- 
fectly just  lens  a  photograph  were  taken  of  a  carefully 
constructed  ellipse,  the  photograph  would  have  exactly  the 
same  shape,  but  not  the  same  size,  while  that  the  two  shapes 
are  identical  is  proved  because  the  analytical  equation  for 
one  will  be  found  identical  with  that  for  the  other.  Only  the 
constants  which  define  the  size  will  be  different.  The  same 
is  true  mutatis  mutandis  for  a  photograph  of  the  most  com- 
plicated object.  In  so  far  as  it  truly  represents  the  object 
it  is  just  so  far  identical  with  it.  Likewise  the  sample  of 
cloth  represents  the  web  in  so  far  as  it  has  the  exact  colour, 
texture,  and  thickness  of  the  rest  of  the  web.  If  it  has  not 
these  identical,  it  is  not  a  fair  sample  or  a  true  representa- 
tion. As  to  the  number  of  yards,  be  it  noted,  the  sample 
does  not  profess  to  be  a  representation.  Just  so  the  states- 
man represents  the  voters  who  elected  him  in  so  far  as  he 
does  precisely  what  a  majority  of  them,  in  the  same  situa- 
tion, would  do.  If  he  does  not  do  this  he  does  not  truly 
represent  them,  although  he  may  do  better  or  worse  than 
they  would  do. 

"A  representation  is  always  partially  identical  with  that 
which  it  represents,  and  completely  identical  in  all  those  fea- 


200  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

tures  and  respects  in  which  it  is  a  representation  .  .  . 
every  case  of  representation  is  a  case  of  partial  or  complete 
identity  ..."  (p.  142-143). 

Pausing  now  to  estimate  this  interesting  and  admirably 
worked  out  account  of  the  universe,  we  ask,  how  far  has  it 
deduced  consciousness  from  objects  ?  Certainly  it  has  been 
able,  to  an  extent  hitherto  unequalled,  to  find  in  the  pecul- 
iarly conscious  states,  objective  material.  Yet  we  must 
recall  a  significant  phrase  of  Professor  Holt,  in  his  definition 
of  mind  as  a  cross-section  of  neutral  objects.  He  said :  "Any 
class  that  is  formed  from  the  members  of  a  given  manifold 
by  some  selective  principle  which  is  independent  of  the  prin- 
ciples which  have  organized  the  manifold  may  be  called  a 
cross-section.  And  such  a  thing  is  consciousness  or  mind  " 
(quoted  above  p.  197).  We  have  italicized  the  words  which 
suggest  our  criticism.  Is  not  that  selective  principle  which 
marks  out  the  mental  from  the  total  matrix  of  things,  inde- 
pendent of  that  matrix  ?  If  the  objective  deduction  is  to  be 
carried  through,  it  must  be  shown  that  the  power  of  the 
nervous  system  to  select,  to  make  specific  response,  to  carve 
out  its  objects  from  the  rest,  is  itself  explicable  upon  quite 
objective  grounds.  This  is,  for  aught  yet  seen,  a  doubtful 
matter.  The  structure  and  functions  of  the  nervous  system 
have  not  yet  been  proved  capable  of  explanation  upon  phys- 
ical or  neutral  grounds  alone.  We  do  not  now  wish  to  deny 
that  that  may  sometime  be  done;  but  until  it  is  done,  the 
case  for  Great  Objectivism  is  at  any  rate  incomplete.  Does 
there  not  remain,  then,  something  irreducible  about  mind, 
namely,  the  fact  that  there  is  a  selective,  responsive  prin- 
ciple ?  This  is  the  same  point  that  we  made  against  Mon- 
tague's theory.  We  said  then  that  it  was  not  explained, 
how  the  potentiality  which  we  call  consciousness  can,  in 
consequence  of  objective  laws,  actually  come  into  being. 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  2OI 

That  mysterious  presence-in-absence  of  the  past  event 
which  constitutes  memory,  so  impossible  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  physical  order,  remained  as  mysterious,  as  inex- 
plicable as  ever.  And  has  Professor  Holt  come  any  nearer 
to  showing  how  the  world  of  objects  can  of  itself  so  function 
as  to  separate  out  a  part  of  itself  in  the  manner  designated 
as  a  conscious  cross-section  ?  Materialism  has  ever  been 
unable  to  explain  the  origin  of  consciousness.  Though  Holt 
is  no  materialist,  his  task  is  analogous  to  materialism's  task. 
His  Platonic  realism  does  not  lighten  it ;  for  is  it  any  easier 
to  show  how  subsisting  relations,  concepts,  and  principles 
give  rise  to  a  selecting  mind,  than  it  was  for  the  materialist 
to  show  how  the  concourse  of  atoms  developed  into  a  con- 
scious organism  ?  And  failure  of  materialism  seems  to 
augur  a  like  failure  of  Great  Objectivism;  indeed  we  shall 
shortly  learn  that  the  latter  type  is  inherently  unable  to 
give  the  ratio  existendi  of  mind.  The  great  merit  of  Holt's 
work,  as  (in  the  reverse  direction)  of  Berkeley's,  Natorp's, 
Miinsterberg's,  and  others',  lies  in  the  extent  to  which  he 
has  reduced  all  conscious  contents  to  objective  terms.  None 
has  done  so  much  as  he,  in  this  regard.  He  has  made  clear 
the  general  principle,  that  every  phase  of  mind,  every  con- 
scious state  and  content,  can  be  objectively  defined.  Yet 
the  fact  that  there  is  something  to  be  denned  is  not  itself 
accounted  for.  The  situation  is  in  every  respect  analogous 
with  the  earlier  one  of  subjectivism.  Everything  about  the 
object  can  be  reduced  to  subjective  terms,  but  the  presence 
of  objects,  as  distinct  from  the  subject,  cannot  be  grounded. 
So  here,  everything  about  mind  can  be  expressed  in  objec- 
tive phraseology,  but  the  presence  of  mind  as  a  specific 
kind  of  behaviour  among  objects,  cannot  be  explained.  The 
conclusion  is  strongly  suggested  that  here  as  in  Montague's 
essay,  Great  Objectivism  has  met  its  critical  point.  It  is 


202  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

true,  but  it  is  infertile  to  generate  that  very  notion  which  it 
was  designed  to  produce. 

Coming  now  to  details,  we  find  that  the  existence  of  errors, 
as  events  in  the  history  of  minds,  is  not  elucidated.  We  may 
admit  that  errors  are  a  kind  of  contradiction  found  in  con- 
scious cross-sections;  we  may  acquiesce  in  the  statement 
that  contradiction  is  also  a  physical  fact  of  frequent  occur- 
rence; as  when  opposing  forces  act  upon  a  body.  Yet  there 
is  a  difference  between  the  two  kinds  of  contradiction.  In 
the  material  world,  the  opposition  is  in  a  sense  instantly  re- 
solved —  as  Satan  like  lightning  fell  from  heaven.  When 
the  dropping  ball  hits  the  ground  it  stops  or  rebounds.  The 
motion  which  "  contradicts  "  the  resistance  of  the  earth 
does  not  continue.  The  opposing  forces  may  somehow  be 
working  against  each  other,  but  their  effects  do  not  exist  in 
contradiction;  the  ball  is  not  at  the  same  time  moving 
through  the  earth's  surface  and  being  pushed  outward  by 
the  earth's  resistance.  In  the  physical  world  the  law  of 
contradiction  is  still  valid;  two  conflicting  results  cannot 
hold  of  the  same  body.  In  human  errors  on  the  other  hand, 
both  members  of  the  contradiction  do  exist  together;  the 
opposition  persists  without  the  least  hint  of  solution.  I  see 
in  the  dusk  a  shape,  which  I  consider  that  of  a  man;  it 
really  is  a  post.  The  judgment  that  it  is  a  man  contradicts 
the  physical  presence  there  of  the  post,  yet  neither  side  of 
this  contradiction  is  annulled.  The  erroneous  judgment  con- 
tinues unabated,  and  so  does  the  post;  whereas  the  motion 
of  the  ball  ceases.  The  error  persists,  of  course,  because  it  is 
in  a  distinct  field,  that  of  consciousness;  if  it  were  an  object 
of  the  same  sort  as  the  post,  both  the  error  and  the  truth 
could  not  remain.  For  this  reason,  then,  errors  are  extant 
unresolved ;  and  that  is  not  to  be  expected  in  an  instance  of 
contradiction.  Once  more,  note  the  similarity  of  our  criti- 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  203 

cism  here  to  the  one  we  passed  upon  Dr.  Montague;  for 
thereby  is  suggested  an  intrinsic  infertility  on  the  part  of 
Great  Objectivism.  As  Montague  could  not  account  for  the 
actual  presence  of  what  is  physically  not  present  but  only 
potential,  so  Holt  is,  we  think,  unable  to  justify  the  real 
occurrence,  unmitigated  by  the  contradicting  fact,  of  er- 
roneous opinions.  The  actuality  of  the  subjective  is  again 
found  to  be  an  unsolved  mystery. 

Professor  Holt,  we  remember,  does  indeed  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  essay,  Illusory  Experience,  indicate  that  errors 
are  not  necessarily  subjective  things;  they  occur  in  the  phys- 
ical order,  in  such  cases  as  bad  photographs,  faulty  ma- 
chine-made products,  etc.  Be  it  so  then;  they  are  no  less 
denials  of  the  actual  fact,  and  their  occurrence  undissolved 
is  no  less  an  impossibility.  He  may  now  designate  their 
habitat  by  another  name  than  mind,  viz.,  the  realm  of  "  sub- 
sistence ";  and  yet  this  is  but  a  title  for  a  limbo  of  mysteries. 
It  is  precisely  the  task  of  the  philosopher  to  account  for  this 
limbo.  The  history  of  metaphysics,  says  James  in  effect 
somewhere,  is  but  the  writing  down  of  so  many  solving 
names;  men  think  they  have  explained  a  group  of  facts 
when  they  have  invented  a  new  name  for  it.  We  condemn 
the  "  faculty-psychology  "  for  trying  to  account  for,  say, 
the  activity  of  intellect,  by  invoking  an  occult  thing  called 
Reason ;  but  is  not  the  new-realist  guilty  of  the  same  fault 
when  he  thinks  to  throw  light  on  the  problem  of  error  by  con- 
signing error  to  the  class  of  "  subsistents  "  ?  The  method  is 
quite  unfruitful.  We  are  not  led  to  understand  how  real 
things  can  give  off  this  vapour  of  unreal  subsistence,  or  why, 
in  the  terms  of  our  present  system,  being  should  come  to 
divide  into  the  two  realms  of  being  real  and  being  unreal.  In 
any  case,  the  dualism  between  errors  and  facts  (or  truths) 
persists  and  will  not  be  explained  away. 


204  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

But  to  return  to  the  problem  of  consciousness.  The  same 
failure  to  ground  the  presence  of  minds  is  found  in  that 
"very  holy  of  holies  of  the  subjective"  (Concept  of  Con- 
sciousness, p.  282),  volition.  Professor  Holt  urges — and,  we 
grant,  rightly  urges  —  that  volitions,  being  purposes,  are 
comparable  to  laws  of  nature,  to  generative  formulae,  as 
of  an  algebraic  series,  etc.  "  Now  if  we  examine  candidly 
any  human  purpose,  we  shall  see  that  it  is  nothing  other 
than  just  such  a  generative  law.  ...  It  is,  for  instance, 
my  desire  to  walk  along  the  edge  of  a  cliff,  keeping  near 
enough  to  the  edge  so  as  to  see  the  surf  below  and  far 
enough  from  it  so  as  to  run  no  danger  of  falling  over.  .  .  . 
This  purpose  is  at  once  then  the  law  of  my  movements; 
it  generates  them  and  is  itself  their  sole  unity."  And  this 
law  is  "  absolutely  all  that  I  can  discover  about  it  in  my 
own  most  '  subjective '  recesses  of  consciousness "  (Con- 
cept of  Consciousness,  p.  287).  "A  purpose  or  volition  is 
then  nothing  at  all  mysteriously  subjective,  and  it  is  a  law  of 
the  same  type  as  is  found  in  the  neutral  realm  logically  ante- 
cedent to  either  matter  or  mind"  (ibid.,  p.  288).  Of  course 
the  law  may  not  be  manifested  in  overt  deeds,  just  as  the 
law  of  falling  bodies  is  not  realized  when  the  bodies  are  sup- 
ported —  or  may  not  be  present  to  consciousness,  as  in  the 
sleepwalker's  skillful  perambulations  —  but  when  it  is  pres- 
ent it  is  that  sort  of  objective  logical  entity.  And  that  is 
why  we  speak  of  the  purpose  or  will  of  a  race,  a  nation,  a 
social  group.  It  may  or  may  not  be  clear  to  the  conscious- 
ness of  any  member  of  the  group ;  but  it  is  none  the  less  a 
real  influence,  a  law  of  the  behaviour  of  those  members.  Yet, 
acknowledge  though  we  must  the  truth  of  his  description,  we 
are  obliged  to  pass  the  same  judgment  here  as  before  upon 
Professor  Holt's  view.  The  essentially  "  subjective  "  aspect 
of  a  purpose  lies  in  the  presence  of  the  end  at  which  I  aim,  to 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  205 

my  mind  before  that  end  is  objectively  realized.  This  pres- 
ence of  the  not  yet  realized  is  the  counterpart  of  memory, 
which  is  the  presence  of  the  no  longer  realized,  or  past, 
event.  What  then  accounts  for  that  odd  presence  of  the 
future  which  is  not  yet  present  ?  As  with  Montague,  so 
with  Holt:  there  is  a  sort  of  actuality  which  mind  seems  to 
confer  upon  that  not-present  end;  a  temporal,  not  a  Pla- 
tonic actuality,  which  it  is  the  very  essence  of  mind  to  con- 
fer. It  is  more  than  a  mere  potentiality :  it  is  more  than  the 
mere  law  of  the  series  of  purposive  acts :  it  is  rather  the  im- 
mediate presence  here  and  now  of  the  particular  end  aimed 
at  or  event  remembered,  res  ipsissima.  (So,  at  least,  say 
these  realists.)  And  there  is  nothing  in  the  documents  of 
Great  Objectivism  which  informs  us  why  this  presence 
occurs.  Why  do  I  now  think  of  the  purpose  which  defines 
the  course  of  my  deeds  ?  A  stone  presumably  does  not  think 
of  the  law  of  gravitation  which  governs  its  various  positions 
during  the  fall;  but  I  am  conscious  of  the  motive  which 
directs  my  steps  along  the  edge  of  the  cliff. 

Such  then  is  our  estimate  of  two  new-realistic  attempts  to 
reduce  mind  to  objective  terms.  There  are  other  endeavours 
also  in  the  philosophic  field  today,  but  none — with  one 
exception  —  have  been  carried  through  in  the  same  sys- 
tematic spirit,  or  with  the  same  appreciation  of  the  Great 
Objectivism  which  is  their  moving  power.  We  therefore 
merely  mention  the  view  of  S.  Alexander  (Mind,  1912,  p. 
315)  which  defines  knowledge  as  a  certain  kind  of  "  together- 
ness "  of  objects,  and  the  definition  of  G.  E.  Moore  (Mind, 
1903,  p.  450  ff.)  which  reduces  consciousness  to  a  sort  of 
"  diaphanousness  "  of  objects.  It  seems  obvious  that  our 
criticism  will  apply  to  these,  however  fully  they  are  worked 
out;  for  these  relations  of  "  togetherness "  and  "  dia- 
phanousness "  are  themselves  as  unique  as  anything  in  the 


206  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

world.  The  category  of  relation,  indeed,  useful  as  it  often 
is  in  affording  description,  is  not  of  itself  a  guarantee  of 
scientific  fertility;  it  may  often  simply  rename  an  old  mys- 
tery, and  one  may  doubt  if,  for  the  purposes  of  a  map  of  the 
world-order,  it  is  able  to  replace  wholly  the  older  notion  of 
substance.  But  we  have  said  this  before. 

We  spoke  just  now  of  an  exception.  There  is  a  most  im- 
portant one,  fully  informed  with  the  spirit  of  Great  Objec- 
tivism, and  yet  in  sharp  contrast  with  the  above  views.  If 
those  views  have  not  been  quite  able  to  account  for  mind's 
appearance  in  the  scheme  of  the  universe,  perhaps  it  is 
because  they  treated  it  as  a  ready-made  affair,  a  thing,  a 
static  entity.  But  surely  it  is  rather  a  process  or  function. 
Would  it  not  then  be  better  to  define  it  by  its  behaviour 
than  by  its  inner  constitution  ?  So  think  those  who  share 
the  view  which  we  now  proceed  to  expound.  It  is  a  dynamic 
view;  it  treats  consciousness  as  a  mode  of  behaviour  of  the 
organism.  On  the  whole  it  is  the  view  suggested  by  the 
doctrines  of  the  "  pragmatic  "  school;  those  who  adopt  the 
biological  point  of  view  as  the  more  ultimate  one  for  meta- 
physics. The  treatment  of  pragmatism  as  a  whole  shall  be 
given  later,  when  we  discuss  the  subtypes  of  Great  Objec- 
tivism; at  present  we  are  concerned  only  with  its  great- 
objectivism,  its  reduction  of  consciousness  to  terms  of  the 
behaviour  of  those  objects  which  we  call  living  organisms. 

On  this  view,  we  start  with  the  supposition  that  thought, 
consciousness,  the  "  psychical,"  occurs  in  living  organisms 
only.  Now  obviously  the  only  proper  way  of  learning  its 
nature  is  to  study  it  in  concrete,  in  the  actual  situations  in 
which  it  is  found;  i.  e.,  as  a  process  occurring  in  living 
beings.  But  all  living  processes  are  reactions  of  one  sort  or 
another  to  stimulation  by  some  part  of  the  environment. 
Such  is,  e.  g.,  the  grasping  reflex,  by  which  the  fingers  of  the 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  2 07 

babe  involuntarily  close  about  an  object  touching  the  hand's 
inner  surface;  such,  equally,  is  the  deliberate  choice  of  a 
cigar  by  a  mature  smoker  —  a  choice  based  upon  the  stimuli 
of  touch,  of  smell,  and  of  suggestions  afforded  by  the  mem- 
ory of  other  cigars.  The  psychologists  have  pretty  well 
shown  that  all  our  mental  life,  even  of  the  most  refined  intel- 
lectual sort,  such  as  solving  a  problem  of  higher  mathe- 
matics, or  deciding  upon  our  religious  beliefs,  can  be  brought 
under  this  same  rubric.  In  these  cases  the  stimuli  are  simply 
of  a  more  ideal  sort  and  the  full  reactions  may  be  deferred 
for  a  longer  or  shorter  period.  For  the  stimulus  of  a  bodily 
reaction  may  be  of  the  most  varied  kind:  a  light  ray,  a 
bodily  pain,  a  memory;  and  the  reaction  may  be  a  percep- 
tible movement  of  eye,  hand,  vocal  apparatus,  or  it  may  be  a 
brain-current  (thought)  whose  muscular  expression  in 
speech,  writing,  or  other  act  is  temporarily  suppressed.  All 
conscious  states,  be  they  never  so  quiet,  are  active.  Even 
in  so  passive  a  state  as  listening  to  the  wind  when  it  moans 
in  the  trees,  we  unconsciously  adjust  the  ear  and  set  the 
muscles  of  the  throat,  perhaps,  as  if  to  sing  to  the  pitch 
heard,  while  the  brain's  activity,  in  the  shape  of  fancy, 
travels  far  and  fast  along  the  road  suggested  by  the  mem- 
ories which  the  sound  calls  up.  And  so  on;  it  would  be 
tedious  to  detail  the  familiar  teachings  of  modern  psy- 
chology (cf.  e.  g.,  Angell,  Psychology,  ch.  3).  Great 
Objectivism,  building  upon  this  biologically  coloured  science 
of  mind,  finds  a  definition  of  consciousness  almost  ready  to 
take  for  the  asking,  viz.,  a  certain  type  of  reaction  to  stimu- 
lation. What  type  then  ?  Everything  in  a  sense  reacts 
upon  its  environment :  the  stone  reflects  back  the  heat-rays 
which  come  to  it  from  the  sun.  But  it  does  not  redirect  the 
energy  so  as  to  further  its  own  existence.  This  conscious 
beings  do.  But  conscious  beings,  even  when  they  are  not 


208  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

acting  consciously,  as  in  reflex  or  instinctive  action,  may 
also  react  in  ways  unfavourable  to  their  preservation.  Con- 
sciousness must  evidently  be  further  differentiated.  Now 
we  learn  from  genetic  psychology  that  it  appears  first  in  the 
early  life  of  the  human  being  on  occasions  where  the  instinct 
or  reflex  does  not  produce  the  desirable  end,  or  when  its 
action  is  blocked,  and  some  new  sort  of  conduct  is  needed. 
Upon  such  an  occasion  thought,  rudimentary  though  it  may 
be,  arises.  The  child,  the  beast,  the  adult,  who  has  lost  his 
way,  knows  not  by  instinct  which  direction  to  take;  he 
wakes  up  to  the  difficulty,  casts  about  in  his  mind,  starts  to 
respond  to  the  situation  by  turning  this  way  or  that.  The 
cat,  finding  the  door  closed  through  which  he  usually  passes, 
in  perplexity  paws  about  here  and  there  until  by  accident  he 
hits  the  latch,  thus  undoing  it,  and  goes  out.  By  the  method 
of  trial  and  error  he  has  found  the  proper  response.  The 
child  learns  in  the  same  way;  but  his  growing  power  of 
thought  enables  him  to  avoid  the  trouble  of  going  through 
many  of  the  possible  responses.  In  his  brain  the  nerve- 
current  arises  which  would  lead  out  through  the  motor 
nerves  to  a  certain  action.  But  he  has  learned  by  experience 
that  that  action  would  not  be  a  success,  and  the  current  is 
checked.  This  nipping  of  the  current,  this  holding  up  of  the 
action,  marks  the  distinction  between  thought  and  deed: 
thought,  the  essence  of  consciousness,  is  then  incipient  or 
tentative  response.  When  the  incipient  immediately  be- 
comes the  completed  act,  as  in  an  instinctive  reaction  or 
reflex  action,  like  grasping  or  sucking  the  breast,  thought 
and  consciousness  are  at  a  minimum ;  where  the  response  is 
delayed  and  there  is  hesitation,  plans  of  action  arise,  i.  e., 
tendencies  to  act  which  are  frustrated  by  other  tendencies 
until  finally  some  stronger  one  prevails  and  action  results. 
This  is  equally  the  case  in  the  child  finding  his  way  home  and 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  2 09 

the  statesman  outlining  his  policy  for  years  to  come.  The 
brain  is  the  instrument  of  thought  because  the  brain  is  the 
theatre  of  these  incipient  nerve-currents  which  may  or  may 
not  get  to  their  end-organs,  the  muscles,  and  give  rise  to 
specific  behaviour.  Thinking  then  appears  as  a  labour- 
saving  device,  whose  usefulness  has  rendered  its  possessor 
more  likely  to  survive  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  Thus  an 
evolutionary  point  of  view  enables  Great  Objectivism  to 
fulfill  its  purpose  of  defining  consciousness.  "  The  brain,  the 
last  physical  organ  of  thought,"  says  Professor  Dewey,  "  is 
a  part  of  the  same  practical  machinery  for  bringing  about 
adaptation  of  the  environment  to  the  life  requirements  of  the 
organism,  to  which  belong  legs  and  hand  and  eye.  That  the 
brain  frees  organic  behaviour  from  complete  servitude  to 
immediate  physical  conditions,  that  it  makes  possible  the 
liberation  of  energy  for  remote  and  ever  expanding  ends  is, 
indeed,  a  precious  fact,  but  not  one  which  removes  the  brain 
from  the  category  of  organic  devices  of  behaviour."  (J. 
Dewey,  Does  Reality  Possess  Practical  Character  ?  in  Essays 
in  Honor  of  William  James,  etc.,  pp.  64-65.)  And  again  in 
justification  of  this  dynamic  description:  "  It  is  interesting 
to  note  how  the  metaphysical  puzzles  regarding  '  parallel- 
ism/ '  interaction,'  '  automatism,'  the  relation  of  '  con- 
sciousness '  to  '  body/  evaporate  when  one  ceases  isolating 
the  brain  into  a  peculiar  physical  substrate  of  mind  at  large, 
and  treats  it  simply  as  one  portion  of  the  body,  as  the  in- 
strumentality of  adaptive  behaviour  "  (p.  65,  footnote).  We 
may  quote  also  the  words  of  Royce,  who  has  accepted  much 
of  the  view:  "  Your  intelligent  ideas  of  things  never  consist 
of  mere  imagery  of  the  thing,  but  always  involve  a  con- 
sciousness of  how  you  propose  to  act  toward  the  thing  of 
which  you  have  ideas  "  (World  and  Individual,  vol.  I,  p.  22). 
Hear  also  this  statement  of  Dewey's:  "  Awareness  means 


210  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

attention,  and  attention  means  a  crisis  of  some  sort  in  an 
existent  situation.  ...  It  represents  something  the  mat- 
ter, something  out  of  gear,  or  in  some  way  menaced,  inse- 
cure, problematical,  or  strained.  This  state  of  tension  .  .  . 
is  not  merely  in  the  '  mind,'  it  is  nothing  merely  emotional. 
It  is  in  the  facts  of  the  situation  as  transitive  facts  ..." 
(Dewey,  op.  cit.,  p.  73).  "  If  this  be  true,  then  awareness 
.  .  .  means  things  entering,  via  the  particular  thing  known 
as  an  organism,  into  a  peculiar  condition  of  differential  — 
or  additive  —  change  "  (p.  74).  This  marks  the  disappear- 
ance of  the  old  "  sublimated  gaseous  consciousness  "  (foot- 
note p.  74)  and  the  substitution  for  it  of  the  process-view. 
Or  again:  "  If  knowing  is  so  qualitatively  and  functionally 
different  from  alterative  action,  how  do  we  make  the  transi- 
tion from  it  to  efficient  action  ?  "  (Moore,  Pragmatism  and  its 
Critics,  p.  106).  If  knowledge  is  passive  contemplation,  how 
comes  it  that  the  knower  ever  acts  ?  The  new  view  makes 
this  clear  by  showing  that  knowledge  is  a  kind  of  action. 
Professor  Dewey  has  also  said,  in  a  discussion  of  Bergson: 
"  In  words  of  Bergson's  own  which  cannot  be  bettered: 
'  That  which  constitutes  perception  is  our  dawning  action, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  prefigured  in  those  images  (namely,  objects). 
The  actuality  of  our  perception  thus  lies  in  its  activity,  in  the 
movements  which  prolong  it.'  Take  this  passage  seriously 
and  literally,  and  you  have  the  precise  view  of  perception 
here  contended  for.  It  is  ...  a  process  of  choosing.  The 
possible  responses  involved  are  not  merely  postponed,  but 
are  operative  in  the  quality  of  present  sensori-motor  re- 
sponses. The  perceived  subject-matter  is  not  simply  a 
manifestation  of  conditions  antecedent  to  the  organic 
responses,  but  is  their  transformation  in  the  direction  of 
further  action  "  (Journal  of  Philosophy,  1912,  p.  663).  Or 
as  Moore  says  "  .  .  .  for  the  pragmatist  the  distinction  of 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  211 

'  fact '  and  '  idea '  is  a  distinction  of  ways  in  which  a  con- 
tent functions."  (Pragmatism,  etc.,  p.  169,  footnote.) 

Moreover,  if  we  do  not  adopt  behaviour  as  the  essence  of 
consciousness,  what  else  have  we  ?  A  mere  entity  behind 
the  scenes,  whose  presence  will  make  no  difference  whatever 
to  conduct;  a  mind  which  does  nothing  and,  pragmatically 
considered,  might  as  well  not  be;  a  mere  zero  point.  Con- 
sciousness must  at  least  lead  to  behaviour  of  a  specific  type: 
if  a  thing  is  what  it  does  —  is  its  relations  —  then  what  does 
nothing  is  nothing.  (This  is  also  the  argument  of  E.  A. 
Singer,  Journal  of  Philosophy,  1911,  on  pp.  181-183  of  a 
paper  entitled  Mind  as  an  Observable  Object.)  And  that  argu- 
ment loses  no  force  if  we  do  not  yet  know  even  what  type 
of  behaviour  consciousness  essentially  consists  in.  "  But 
thought  I  don't  know  what  life  means,  nor  what  conscious- 
ness means,  I  feel  that  I  know  how  we  may  go  to  work  to 
find  out  these  things,  if  once  we  see  that  neither  stands  for 
an  eject  forever  veiled  and  hidden  in  the  land  beyond  ex- 
perience "  (Singer,  op.  tit.,  p.  184). 

Finally,  there  is  the  argument  of  scientific  utility.  It 
seems  probable  —  though  it  has  never  been  absolutely 
proved  —  that  every  "  thought  "  or  "  state  "  of  mind  has 
its  uniquely  corresponding  brain-event  and  bodily  event. 
But  if  so,  why  is  not  the  mental  state  the  same  thing  as  the 
latter  ?  The  latter  is  verifiably  present,  the  former  elusive 
at  best;  the  correspondence  between  the  two  alleged  by 
"  parallelism  "  would  be  explained  by  identifying  the  former 
with  the  latter.  Wundt,  to  be  sure,  has  enumerated  certain 
"  states  "  that  have  no  brain-correlative,  viz.,  self-conscious- 
ness, valuation,  etc.  Yet  these  must  have  their  appropriate 
bodily  set  or  tendencies  —  hard  though  they  may  be  to  dis- 
cover; and  it  is  surely  more  economical  to  retain  these  last 
alone  in  our  system  and  discard  the  "  veiled  and  hidden  " 
mental  states. 


212  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Let  us  now  adjudge  the  merits  of  this  position.  The 
dynamic  theory  has  its  critical  points.  Take  for  instance, 
memory.  There  is  undoubtedly  a  conscious  "  state  "  or 
organic  response  which  goes  by  this  name,  and  it  has,  by 
general  consent,  the  property  of  referring  to  ("  being  aware 
of  "  is  the  usual  phrase)  a  past  event.  Now,  there  can  be 
nothing  in  the  nature  of  present  behaviour  —  be  it  of  what- 
ever sort  —  to  indicate  that  its  object  is  past.  That  the 
organism  reacts  in  a  certain  way,  however  complicated,  is  a 
present  fact,  and  contains  nothing  about  it  which  suggests 
that  the  object  to  which  it  adjusts  itself  was,  and  no  longer 
is,  real.  The  organism's  action  thus  fails  to  give  an  account 
of  the  full  significance  of  the  knowledge  of  past  events.  Sup- 
pose, e.  g.,  we  defined  memory  as  a  type  of  organic  response 
which  treated  its  object  as  fixed,  irrevocable,  unchangeable. 
This  might  be  a  true  description,  but  it  would  not  be  ade- 
quate to  the  meaning  of  the  past,  as  that  which  was  and  is 
not.  Behaviour  itself,  totally  immersed  in  the  stream  of 
time,  for  that  very  reason  cannot  generate  what  we  may  call 
a  vision  of  the  stream  from  without.  Here  must  enter,  it 
would  seem,  a  certain  static  aspect  of  consciousness;  that 
by  virtue  of  which,  in  consciousness,  the  past  persists  rela- 
tively unchanged  and  thus  not  subject  to  the  wear  and  tear 
of  time.  The  dynamic  can  define  the  static  no  more  than 
the  static  can  define  the  dynamic.  To  be  sure,  memory  is 
fallible,  and  often  does  change  the  object:  yet  if  ever  there 
are  true  memories  there  are  so  far  things  recalled  unchanged. 
Difficult,  impossible  though  it  may  be  to  draw  an  exact  line, 
there  is  yet  a  line  between  the  true  core  and  the  false  dis- 
tortions of  the  remembered  events.  Now  any  view  of  con- 
sciousness, which  makes  it  mere  process  and  no  more,  omits 
this  aspect  of  the  matter.  And  the  same  remarks  apply, 
mutatis  mutandis,  to  expectation  and  prediction.  Notice 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  213 

that  we  do  not  deny  that  consciousness  is  behaviour;  nor 
that  some  of  the  most  interesting  or  the  most  illuminating 
properties  of  consciousness  are  to  be  discovered  in  that 
attribute  of  it.    We  deny  only  that  that  attribute  is  suffi- 
cient to  account  for  certain  undeniable  properties  of  mind. 
When  those  properties  are  once  granted,  indeed,  it  can  truly 
predicate  of  them  their  own  unique  sort  of  behaviour.    No 
doubt  memory  has  its  characteristic  response;   as  also  has 
expectation,  and  indeed  every  conscious  state.    The  case  is 
analogous  with  that  of  previous  philosophic  types.     The 
present  view  meets  a  surd,  a  "  foreign  other  "  which  it  can 
describe,  as  knowledge  of  the  details  of  conscious  behaviour 
grows,  more  and  more  in  its  own  terms,  yet  whose  descrip- 
tion never  reaches  the  limit,  never  quite  touches  the  nerve 
of  that  surd.    If  the  static  views  erred  by  not  accounting  for 
the  tentative  side  of  mind,  its  uneasiness,  its  ever-repeated 
efforts  toward  adjustment,  its  connection  with  the  active 
side  of  our  nature,  the  dynamic  no  less  errs  in  failing  to  ex- 
plain the  statical  aspect,  the  side  of  mind  which,  though 
not  itself  out  of  time,  is  yet  more  or  less  unaffected  by  it  and 
not  so  much  a  process  as  consciousness  thereof.    But  just 
because  that  statical  aspect  is  itself  in  time,  acted-upon, 
object  of  behaviour,  the  view  in  question  can  in  turn  object 
to  our  assertion  of  a  surd,  and  proceed  to  describe  it  further 
and  further.    The  tilt  may  then  become  an  endless  one.    It 
is  like  the  elastic  rubber  cord  fixed  at  both  ends  which  can  be 
stretched  more  and  more  toward  one  without  leaving  the 
other  end. 

The  argument  is  perhaps  more  obvious  in  the  case  of  error. 
In  the  pragmatic  account  of  error,  that  doctrine  is,  we  think, 
seen  at  its  best.  Professor  James  thus  distinguished  unreal 
things  from  real  ones.  "  .  .  .  as  the  general  chaos  of  our 
experience  get  sifted,  we  find  that  there  are  some  fires  that 


214  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

will  always  burn  sticks  and  always  warm  our  bodies,  and 
that  there  are  some  waters  that  will  always  put  out  fires; 
while  there  are  other  fires  and  waters  that  will  not  act  at  all. 
The  general  group  of  experiences  that  act,  that  do  not  only 
possess  their  natures  intrinsically,  but  wear  them  adjec- 
tively  and  energetically,  turning  them  against  one  another, 
comes  inevitably  to  be  contrasted  with  the  group  whose 
members,  having  identically  the  same  natures,  fail  to  mani- 
fest them  in  the  '  energetic  '  way.  I  make  for  myself  now 
an  experience  of  blazing  fire ;  I  place  it  near  my  body ;  but 
it  does  not  warm  me  in  the  least.  I  lay  a  stick  upon  it,  and 
the  stick  either  burns  or  remains  green  as  I  please.  I  call  up 
water,  and  pour  it  on  the  fire,  and  absolutely  no  difference 
ensues.  I  account  for  all  such  facts  by  calling  this  whole 
train  of  experiences  unreal,  a  mental  train.  Mental  fire  is 
what  won't  burn  real  sticks;  mental  water  is  what  won't 
necessarily  (though  of  course  it  may)  put  out  even  a  mental 
fire.  Mental  knives  may  be  sharp  but  they  won't  cut  real 
wood.  Mental  triangles  are  pointed,  but  their  points 
won't  wound.  With  '  real '  objects,  on  the  contrary, 
consequences  always  accrue  ..."  (Essays  in  Radical 
Empiricism,  pp.  32-33.) 

As  Professor  Dewey  says,  "  A  mistake  is  literally  a  mis- 
handling "  (op.  cit.,  above,  p.  69).  A  tentative  reaction  of 
the  organism,  designed  to  enable  it  to  adjust  itself  to  a  cer- 
tain given  situation,  which  if  carried  out  would  fail  to  pro- 
duce such  adjustment — that  is  error.  "  For  if  and  so  far  as 
an  assertion  satisfies  or  forwards  the  purpose  of  the  inquiry 
to  which  it  owes  its  being,  it  is  so  far  '  true  ';  if  and  so  far  as 
it  thwarts  or  baffles  it,  it  is  unworkable,  unserviceable, 
'  false  '  "  (F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  Studies  in  Humanism,  p.  154). 
The  aptness  of  these  definitions  is  seen  by  a  comparison  of 
them  with  the  following  definition  (from  the  pen  of  an  op- 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  215 

ponent) :  "  Thus  the  judgment  that  two  terms  have  a  cer- 
tain relation  R  is  the  relation  of  the  mind  to  the  two  terms 
and  the  relation  R  with  the  appropriate  sense:  the  '  cor- 
responding '  complex  (the  object  of  the  judgment)  consists 
of  the  two  terms  related  by  the  relation  R  with  the  same 
sense.  The  judgment  is  true  when  there  is  such  a  complex, 
and  false  when  there  is  not.  The  same  account,  mutatis 
mutandis,  will  apply  to  any  other  judgment.  This  gives  the 
definition  of  truth  and  falsehood"  (B.  Russell,  Philosophical 
Essays,  p.  184).  Now  the  latter  definition  simply  says,  in 
technical  language,  that  a  judgment  is  true  when  it  corre- 
sponds to  fact,  false  when  it  does  not;  an  assertion  which  is 
as  clear  as  it  is  uninforming.  Of  the  meaning  of  "corre- 
spondence" there  is  no  analysis.  The  pragmatic  definition, 
however,  tells,  right  or  wrongly,  what  "  correspondence  " 
means.  It  renders  that  notion  into  something  capable  of 
verification,  open  to  test  and  experiment;  it  really  does 
define  the  terms  truth  and  error. 

Is  there,  then,  anything  about  error  which  this  definition 
neglects  ?  Notice  that  it  speaks  of  tentative  response;  the 
error  is  the  response  which  the  organism  tends  to  make,  and 
which  if  completed  would  lead  to  maladjustment.  This 
reduces  the  thing  to  a  potential  affair,  and  reminds  us  of 
Montague's  definition.  We  criticized  that,  on  the  ground 
that  it  did  not  do  justice  to  the  fact  of  the  actual  presence  of 
the  illusory  object  to  the  erring  mind.  Will  not  this  defini- 
tion then  probably  fail  in  a  similar  way  ?  Is  it  not  likely 
that  the  phrase  "  tentative  response  which  would  lead  to 
mishandling  "  will  be  found  to  convey  to  the  reader  no  idea 
of  the  actual  presence,  at  the  moment  when  the  error  is  en- 
tertained, of  the  false  object  ?  For  that  object  is,  in  some 
sense,  thought  of  then  and  there.  You  may  put  this  into 
words  of  practical,  dynamic  import  if  you  like.  Say  that 


21 6  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

the  thought  of  it  is  the  incipient,  projected  reaction  which 
would  lead  to  disaster.    But  that  is  not  an  adequate  account 
of  the  thought.    There  is  more  than  incipient  response,  there 
is  an  intention  to  respond,  an  awareness  more  or  less  dim  of 
the  completed  response,  the  purpose,  which  is  not  yet  car- 
ried out.    What  will,  if  the  response  is  fulfilled,  occupy  some 
time,  is  present  as  a  plan  of  action  all  at  once  to  the  mind  that 
errs.    The  phrase  "  tentative  response  "  does  not  suggest 
this  consciousness  all  at  once  of  what  might  in  the  working 
out  be  spread  over  a  considerable  interval.    Now  such  con- 
sciousness we  undoubtedly  have,  and  it,  with  its  anticipation 
of  the  future,  shows  a  certain  time-transcending  quality 
which  the  dynamic  formula  is  impotent  to  convey.    This  is 
analogous  to  the  case  of  memory  which,  we  saw  a  moment 
ago,  displayed  a  time-transcending  quality  in  recalling  the 
past.    Consider  an  instance.    Suppose  I  judge  a  ditch  to  be 
seven  feet  across  when  it  is  ten;  then,  in  pragmatic  terms,  I 
tend  to  make  too  short  a  leap  in  crossing  it  and  to  fall  in. 
But  this  meaning,  that  the  ditch  requires  only  a  weak  jump, 
is  felt  by  me  all  at  once ;  I  should  not  be  now  in  error  if  my 
organism  did  not  at  present  in  some  way  prefigure  this  leap. 
This  presence  of  a  future  act,  as  a  purpose  now  entertained, 
when  that  act  is  not  physically  present  (and  indeed  cannot 
become  so  because  I  am  mistaken  about  the  width  of  the 
ditch)  —  this  presence  reveals  a  certain  static  aspect  of  the 
case;    an  aspect  which  the  dynamic  account  just  misses. 
Consciousness,  however,  has  both  static  and  dynamic  as- 
pects, and  any  attempt  to  reduce  it  to  terms  of  one  alone 
will  be  unsuccessful.   The  attempt  will  meet  its  critical  point 
in  the  other  aspect.    The  error  of  the  idealists  was,  perhaps, 
in  treating  the  mind  as  if  it  were  out  of  time  and  merely 
static ;  the  dynamic  realists  seem  to  go  to  the  other  extreme, 
treating  it  as  wholly  in  time  and  merely  dynamic.    But  it  is 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  217 

always  in  time  and  yet  it  has  a  power  of  linking  the  different 
parts  of  the  time-stream  —  as  in  memory  and  expectation. 

Nevertheless  the  dynamic  account  is  true  on  its  positive 
side,  and  if  excluded  will  insist  upon  its  rights.  The  very 
consciousness  of  a  purpose,  of  an  act  which  is  to  be  and  is  not 
yet,  involves  a  bodily  set  or  tendency.  It  has  its  character- 
istic behaviour.  Expectation  and  purpose  will  in  general 
show  differently  ordered  responses  from  those  of  memory  or 
perception.  That  behaviour  and  those  responses  will  not  of 
themselves  suggest  that  their  objects  are  future  or  past,  but 
when  it  is  once  granted  that  they  are  such,  then  they  can  be 
defined  as  objects  of  this  and  that  sort  of  response.  It 
is,  again,  just  as  in  the  subjective-objective  issue.  The 
formula  of  subjectivism  cannot  guarantee  the  existence  of 
objective  reality  as  over  against  imagination,  but  when  that 
reality  is  admitted,  subjectivism  can  define  it.  And  the 
same  we  found  true,  mutatis  mutandis,  of  objectivism.  And 
as  there,  when  either  party  tried  to  rule  out  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  other,  an  endless  tilt  was  set  up,  so  here  the 
denial  of  the  dynamic  formula  by  idealism  or  any  static 
theory  of  mind,  or  the  denial  of  the  statical  aspect  of  mind 
by  dynamic  realism,  will  lead  to  a  similar  never-ceasing 
controversy. 

Of  the  superior  merit  which  some  claim  for  the  "  be- 
haviouristic  "  method  (to  repeat  an  ugly  word)  in  psy- 
chology, we  need  not  judge;  nor  are  we  able  to  do  so.  It  is 
for  the  psychologist  alone  to  decide  whether  it  yields  better 
results  than  introspection.  But  as  for  the  assertion  that  this 
latest  definition  of  mind  does  away  with  the  vexed  problems 
of  the  relation  of  mind  and  body,  it  seems  clear  that  that  is  a 
mistake.  The  mind  is  not  the  body,  and  the  question  of 
their  relationship  is  not  deprived  of  sense  when  mind  is 
viewed  as  an  unique  function  or  kind  of  bodily  response. 


21 8  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

As  long  as  mind  is  not  material  —  and  the  view  does  not 
consider  itself  materialistic  —  so  long  the  problem  remains, 
how  a  purpose  or  plan  can  influence  the  brain-currents  and 
through  them  the  body.  Or  how  can  that  function  which  is 
able  to  recall  the  past,  and  lay  hold  of  the  future  in  predic- 
tion, come  to  be  identified  with  a  material  process  (response) 
which  is  confined  to  the  present  ?  In  some  such  way  would 
the  old  questions  now  be  put,  in  view  of  the  dynamic  for- 
mulae; but  they  are  just  as  difficult  of  solution  as  before, 
for  they  are  the  same  questions,  translated  into  a  new 
terminology.  Dynamic  realism  is  hardly  more  fertile  for  the 
explanation  of  properties  of  mind,  than  was  idealism  for  the 
understanding  of  the  details  of  the  objective  world. 

In  finding  the  limits  of  Great  Objectivism  before  the  task 
of  defining  mind,  we  have  by  inclusion  discovered  the  fault 
of  the  old  materialism.  Materialism  was  a  lesser  form  of 
Great  Objectivism,  since  it  would  reduce  mind  to  a  function 
of  a  particular  sort  of  objects,  namely,  material  ones.  It 
was,  indeed,  never  able  to  verify  any  particular  reduction; 
it  tried  one  after  another  —  fire,  gas,  phosphorus,  fine  mat- 
ter of  almost  any  kind,  motion,  vibration,  etc.,  —  but  all 
were  so  palpably  insufficient  to  account  for  the  properties  of 
consciousness  that  it  practically  gave  up  the  attempt.  Pro- 
fessional philosophers  have  for  some  time  ceased  to  be 
materialists,  and  idealistic  doctrines  have  held  possession  of 
the  field,  though  without  having  refuted  the  enemy.  For 
the  fact  remains  that  any  thought-process,  however  subtle 
or  spiritual,  has  its  characteristic  bodily  reaction;  conse- 
quently we  can  describe  the  thought  in  terms  of  the  reaction, 
as  gold  is  replaced  by  bills  and  checks.  It  is  but  a  little  step 
to  the  belief  that  consciousness  is  itself  matter  or  the  motion 
of  matter.  But  we  have  seen  the  critical  point  beyond  whfch 
materialism,  and  even  the  broader  view,  Great  Objectivism, 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  219 

cannot  pass,  viz.,  the  fact  that  in  mind,  the  past  and  future 
are  often  present  —  as  in  memory  and  foresight.  Indeed 
until  that  particular  critical  point  had  been  brought  out,  we 
do  not  believe  it  was  possible  to  parry  the  materialistic  blow. 
If  we  look  at  the  history  of  philosophy  we  find  that  mate- 
rialism was  met  only  in  the  most  superficial  fashion;  so 
superficial,  indeed,  that  the  materialist  usually  went  away 
convinced  that  he  had  beaten  his  opponent.  Idealists  have 
answered  his  charges  by  reversing  the  formula,  reducing 
matter  to  terms  of  perception  and  thought  (as  Berkeley  did). 
But  no  reason  so  far  appeared,  why  their  reduction  was 
truer  than  the  other;  and  meanwhile  the  materialist  re- 
flected that  our  thoughts  are  utterly  dependent  upon  blood- 
supply,  nutrition,  and  other  quite  physical  agents.  The 
idealist  could  not  dispute  this;  the  most  he  could  do  was  to 
interpret  blood-supply,  etc.,  once  more  in  psychical  terms. 
This  left  the  materialist  practically  master  of  the  situation; 
so  the  idealist  returned  to  the  fray  with  a  counter-affirma- 
tion, which  made  up  for  its  logical  weakness  by  its  dogmatic 
fervor.  "  Thought  simply  is  not  matter  or  motion!  "  (e.  g., 
Paulsen,  Introduction  to  Philosophy,  Eng.  tr.  Thilly,  p.  83). 
Without  showing  in  any  specific  way  how  it  is  not  motion 
this  is  no  better  than  saying  to  one's  accuser  "  you  are  a 
liar."  Yet  the  statement  has  in  effect  been  repeated  again 
and  again.  Here  is  a  recent  example :  "  The  brown  colour 
which  I  immediately  see  is  simply  not  a  form  of  wave- 
motion,  but  something  quite  different,  and  by  no  possibility 
can  we,  in  the  least  degree,  trace  the  genesis  of  the  former 
from  any  mode  of  behaviour  of  the  latter"  (G.  Dawes 
Hicks,  Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian  Society,  1911-12, 
p.  177).  Such  statements  may  be  true,  but  they  are  too 
dogmatic  to  be  effective  upon  a  controverted  point.  What 
was  always  needed  was  a  particular  property  of  mind  whose 


220  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

appearance  could  not  be  explained  or  accounted  for  by 
material  properties.  Nevertheless,  even  when  this  has  been 
accomplished,  by  the  instances  of  memory  and  prescience, 
materialism  is  not  annihilated;  but  only  emasculated.  For 
it  can  describe  that  memory  and  prescience,  after  having 
once  admitted  them,  in  terms  of  bodily  response;  whereas, 
though  uniquely  indicating  it,  the  bodily  response  will 
never  sufficiently  define  that  present  transcending  power 
of  the  mind.  And  since  this  unique  indication  is  always 
possible,  we  may  expect  those  thinkers  who  do  not  see 
the  significance  of  the  critical  point  to  return  anon  to  the 
charge  and  to  revive  materialism.  Presumably  the  theory 
will  be  yet  many  times  revived  —  so  desirous  is  man  of  an 
exclusive  monism  —  before  the  lesson  is  learned.  Precisely 
the  same  is  true  of  spiritualism.  Spiritualism  is  the  kind  of 
idealism  which  considers  mind  to  be  a  substance  —  im- 
material of  course  —  and  matter  as  a  phase  of  that  sub- 
stance. It  keeps  the  mysterious  category  of  mind-substance, 
even  as  materialism  keeps  the  mysterious  category  of 
physical  substance.*  But  as  neither  subjectivism  nor  ideal- 
ism can  account  for  the  existence  or  the  character  of  real 
objects,  they  are  no  more  final  than  their  opposites.  And 
as  the  less  is  included  in  the  greater,  so  spiritualism  is  unable 
to  meet  the  same  contingency.  Spiritualism  is  as  one-sided 
as  materialism ;  and  is  as  liable  to  recrudescence.  The  battle 
between  these  two  is  as  inevitable  as  the  tilt  between  ideal- 
ism and  realism.  And  each  is  right,  but  infertile.  It  is  owing 
to  its  being  unconscious  of  its  infertility  and  conscious  of  its 
truth,  that  each  continues  to  endeavour  to  refute  the  other. 
Is  it  not  another  instance  of  the  irony  of  history  that  these 
modern  thinkers,  who  endeavour  so  sincerely  to  be  empirical 
and  scientific,  afford  in  their  mutual  rebuttals  and  reprisals 

*  Which  is  the  more  unintelligible,  inert  matter  or  hidden  mind  ? 


GREAT  OBJECTIVISM  221 

one  of  the  clearest  examples  of  that  Hegelian  dialectic  for 
which  they  express  little  but  contempt  ? 

This  completes  our  study  of  Great  Objectivism  as  a  whole. 
We  now  recall  that  it  has  divided  into  three  camps,  roughly 
corresponding  to  the  idealistic  factions  of  rationalism, 
voluntarism,  and  "  pancalism,"  viz.,  Platonic  realism,  prag- 
matism, and  intuitionism.  These  three  are  not  directly 
concerned  with  the  subjective-objective  issue;  and  for  our 
•  own  part,  we  confess  to  a  sense  of  relief  in  leaving  that  pro- 
vincial atmosphere.  It  is  reality  that  the  philosopher 
undertakes  to  investigate ;  the  original  instinct  of  curiosity 
was  turned  object-wards.  There  was  always  a  feeling  of 
unnaturalness  about  a  doctrine  which  put  the  universe's 
centre  of  gravity  within  a  subject.  As  a  protest  against  such 
an  inversion  came  the  spirit  of  Great  Objectivism ;  the  ob- 
jective study  of  facts  as  they  are,  independent  of  human  val- 
uation. If  the  fruits  of  this  spirit  have  failed  to  justify  our 
expectations,  at  least  the  whole  attitude  inclines  us  toward 
forgetting  for  the  moment  about  mind  and  considering 
the  structure  of  reality.  This  is  a  service  which  the  sub- 
jective types,  preoccupied  with  consciousness,  could  hardly 
perform.  It  is  as  if  Great  Objectivism,  in  getting  sufficiently 
away  from  mind  to  define  it,  has  backed  off  far  enough  to 
push  open  the  gate  which  leads  to  the  outer  world.  Through 
that  gate  we  are  now  to  pass.  We  are  to  ask  about  the  real 
nature  of  objects:  physical  objects,  or  concepts,  or  laws,  or 
principles,  or  what  not.  True,  we  shall  find  too  often  that 
they  are  conceived  once  more  in  subjective  terms;  for  the 
subjective  bias  in  modern  thought  is  powerful.  We  shall  not, 
however,  concern  ourselves  much  with  this,  deeming  it 
already  disposed  of.  But  the  issues  between  the  three  ways 
of  describing  objective  reality  are  complicated  enough  to 
demand  a  separate  chapter. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM 

r  I  ^HE  names  in  our  title  subserve  brevity  rather  than 
A  exactness.  Intellectualism  is  often  understood  today 
to  refer  to  certain  rationalistic  tendencies  shown  by  ideal- 
ists; we  denote  by  it  the  rationalism  of  the  realists,  though 
indeed  rationalism,  as  we  shall  soon  define  it,  is  common  to 
both  parties.  But  it  appears  purer  among  the  objective 
schools,  because  it  contains  no  admixture  of  Thought  or  a 
Great  Thinker.  As  to  Pragmatism,  we  do  not  pretend  to 
discuss  the  whole  of  it,  but  only  some  influential  doctrines 
for  which  it  seems  to  be  the  sponsor.  And  we  shall  be  mani- 
festly unjust  to  many  details  of  that  very  concrete  and  sug- 
gestive system  of  Professor  Bergson  which  is  inevitably 
designated  intuitionism,  as  well  as  to  its  twin  sister,  mysti- 
cism, for  we  aim  to  study  either  only  as  a  competitor  with 
other  systems,  i.  e.,  in  that  aspect  of  it  in  which  it  rebuts, 
and  is  rebutted  by,  the  rest  of  them.  As  we  have  repeatedly 
indicated,  each  thinker  and  each  system  is  as  little  of  a  strict 
adherent  to  one  type,  as  is  a  falling  body  to  the  unmixed 
tendency  to  gravitate. 

INTELLECTUALISM 

This  type's  main  thesis  seems  to  be,  that  universal*,  those 
entities  with  which  par  excellence  the  intellect  concerns  itself, 
are  the  real  things;  particular  or  individual  (we  do  not  here 
distinguish  these  adjectives)  things,  events,  persons,  are  not 
real,  or  if  they  are  so,  then  only  by  participating  in  the 
universals  whose  essence  they  dimly  body  forth.  These 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     223 

universals  are  quite  objective,  depending  in  no  way  upon  the 
conscious  minds  who  think  them.  Like  the  types  previously 
discussed,  this  view  envisages  the  whole  scheme  of  things 
from  the  angle  of  a  special  problem;  the  problem  of  the 
relation  between  general  principles  or  laws  and  the  partic- 
ular events  or  things  in  which  those  laws  are  exemplified. 
Also  like  other  types,  it  answers  to  a  certain  temper,  to  a 
certain  group  of  human  insights  and  needs.  Let  us  for  a 
moment  look  at  intellectualism  in  this  broader  light. 

That  it  is  congenital  in  human  nature  was  witnessed  by 
Kant,  when  he  wrote  of  reason's  tendency  to  ascribe  reality 
to  its  "  noumena  "  God,  freedom,  and  immortality;  yes, 
even  while  he  himself  hoped  that  his  own  system  would  sup- 
plant the  tendency.  But  though  no  one  had  recognized  its 
inevitableness,  we  could  scarcely  find  better  evidence  than 
its  reappearance  today.  Of  all  ages  in  history  the  present 
seems  the  least  Platonic:  democracy,  individualism,  human- 
ism, the  practical,  all  these  motives  are  prominent  now  as 
never  before.  Yet  in  this  gravelly  soil  —  even  in  the  British 
Isles  and  the  United  States  of  America  —  the  tender  flower 
has  once  more  bloomed.  The  Platonism  of  Holt,  Russell, 
and  Spaulding  (The  Concept  of  Consciousness,  The  Principles 
of  Mathematics,  The  New  Rationalism}  affords  illustration. 
One  reason  for  its  persistence,  indeed,  lies  in  the  versatility 
of  the  type.  It  can  join  itself  to  so  many  interests,  even 
to  the  most  opposite.  Once  it  fostered  religion:  Plotinus,  the 
Gnostic  Sects,  Augustine,  Eriugena,  Anselm,  used  it  to  help 
the  belief  in  God.  Today  it  disclaims  any  such  religious 
trend;  it  cultivates  instead  the  impersonalities  of  formal 
logic.  Once  the  doctrine  of  the  mystics,  now  it  is  the  foe  of 
romanticism,  the  devotee  of  cold  analysis  and  exact  defi- 
nition. Nevertheless  in  both  extremes  it  is  one  and  the  same 
motive,  the  original  motive  of  its  great  protagonist  Plato, 


224  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

viz.,  aspiration  for  that  which  is  lofty,  higher  than  the  indi- 
vidual and  imperfect,  more  enduring  than  the  changing  par- 
ticular, above  and  beyond  the  immediate  empirically  verified 
content  of  the  moment.  For  those  who  love  personality,  it 
leads  to  a  transcendent  God;  for  those  who  worship  the 
exactness  of  science,  it  leads  to  the  modern  "logistic."  But 
God  and  the  rigid  concepts  are  equally  far  from  the  "  con- 
crete change  and  hurly-burly  of  life,"  and  it  is  this  aloofness, 
and  consequent  stability,  of  the  Ideas,  that  gives  them  their 
worth  and  distinction. 

It  is  a  "  static  "  or  non- temporal  world,  cut  of!  from 
transeunt  detail  and  to  be  investigated  for  its  own  sake,  that 
we  are  asked  to  believe  in.  Not  the  application  to  concrete 
problems  —  why  empirical  space  has  three  dimensions, 
time  but  one,  why  there  is  life,  etc.,  —  nor  to  any  material 
utility :  these  would  degrade  philosophy.  It  is  the  adoration 
of  the  ideal,  unmovedness,  arapa^ia.  Says  a  prominent  de- 
fender of  the  universals:  "  Philosophy  is  a  study  apart  from 
the  other  sciences:  its  results  cannot  be  established  by  the 
other  sciences,  and  conversely  must  not  be  such  as  some 
other  science  might  conceivably  contradict.  Prophecies  as 
to  the  future  of  the  universe,  for  instance,  are  not  the  busi- 
ness of  philosophy:  whether  the  universe  is  progressive, 
retrograde,  or  stationary,  it  is  not  for  the  philosopher  to 
say  "  (B.  Russell,  Scientific  Method  in  Philosophy,  pp.  236- 
237).  "Between  philosophy  and  pure  mathematics  there 
is  a  certain  affinity,  in  the  fact  that  both  are  general  and  a 
priori.  Neither  of  them  asserts  propositions  which,  like 
those  of  history  and  geography,  depend  upon  the  actual  con- 
crete facts  being  just  what  they  are  "  (op.  cit.,p.  186).  Utterly 
dogmatic  are  these  statements,  to  be  sure;  for  they  answer 
but  to  an  ideal  which  is  felt,  which  has  stirred  the  hearts  of 
austere  thinkers  here  and  there;  a  Plato,  a  Spinoza,  a  Rus- 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     225 

sell.  The  earnestness  of  the  feeling  is  evinced  in  the  moral 
tone  which  the  doctrine  assumes:  truth  is  a  duty  (cf.  the 
almost  realistic  Sollen  of  Rickert).  The  method  of  search, 
too,  is  laid  down:  "  from  the  complex  and  relatively  con- 
crete we  proceed  towards  the  simple  and  abstract  by  means 
of  analysis ;  seeking,  in  the  process,  to  eliminate  the  partic- 
ularity of  the  original  subject-matter,  and  to  confine  our 
attention  entirely  to  the  logical/orw  of  the  facts  concerned  " 
(op.  cit.,p.  185).  This  is  from  the  pen  of  a  "  realist,"  but  since 
we  are  now  treating  an  issue  which  is  unconcerned  with  the 
distinction  of  subject  and  object,  we  find  that  "  absolutists  " 
also  share  in  intellectualism.  "  The  way  of  philosophy  is 
not  the  way  of  life  "  says  Mr.  Bradley.  "  Philosophy  is  as 
unable  to  formulate  a  thesis  in  the  realms  properly  belong- 
ing to  physics  or  to  biology,  as  it  is  to  build  a  steam-engine  " 
(Royce,  World  and  Individual,  vol.  II,  p.  7).  And  Mr. 
Bosanquet,  though  not  an  intellectualist,  leans  toward  this 
abstractness  of  intellectualism  when  he  says:  "  We  should 
not  expect  metaphysics  to  predict  terrestrial  history." 
(Principles  of  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  268.)  But  we 
need  not,  of  course,  confine  ourselves  to  the  present:  in 
earlier  philosophy  since  Plato  the  clearest  case  is  that  of 
Stoicism.  If  we  abstract  from  Spinoza's  concern  with  the 
problem  of  mind  and  body  and  look  at  his  general  plan  of 
the  universe,  we  find  it  to  be  suffused  with  the  emotions  of 
the  intellectualist.  In  the  field  of  psychology,  Herbart  is  the 
protagonist  of  the  type.  As  to  the  doctrine  of  scientific  cate- 
gories, the  "  reines  Denken  "  of  Cohen  and  Natorp  is  as 
intellectualistic  as  anything  in  Russell.  The  present  type 
seems  also  fairly  close  to  what  Royce  has  called  the  third 
conception  of  being,  though  not,  of  course,  possessing  the 
subjective  cast  he  has  given  it.  (World  and  Individual, 
vol.  I,  ch.  6.) 


226  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

The  essence  of  the  universal  is  that  it  is  unchangeable.    It 
may  "  enter  into  the  stream  of  time  from  an  eternal  world 
outside  "  (Russell,  op.  cit.,  p.  167),  but  it  is  not  thereby 
affected.    It  is  the  prototype  of  independence.    Whatever  is 
universal  is  independent  of  change  and  of  the  destiny  of  the 
particular  instance;  and  whatever  is  independent  is  so  far 
a  universal.    But  it  is  not  enough  to  grant  that  there  are 
such  independent  entities;  intellectualism  goes  further.    It 
shows  a  decided  preference  for  them,  over  and  above  the 
particulars.    Upon  what  then  is  this  preference  based  ?   It  is 
not  simply  for  a  logical  reason  that  the  universal  is  honored. 
Independence  is  not  demonstrably  a  sign  of  greater  reality. 
Why  is  not  the  dependent  as  real  as  that  upon  which  it  de- 
pends ?    Is  not  the  chain  as  real  as  the  hook  from  which  it 
hangs,  or  the  child  as  actual  as  its  parents  ?    Or  is  it  that  the 
universal  endures  while  the  particular  changes,  vanishes  ? 
But  there  is  no  assigned  reason  why  that  which  survives  to 
a  later  date  is  of  a  higher  metaphysical  rank  than  the  tran- 
sitory.   If  to  be  later  were  to  be  more  real,  then  1900  A.  D.  is 
today  more  real  than  1800  A.  D.  ,  and  so  on  ad  absurdum.   No : 
we  want  to  be  sure  of  something  in  the  future,  something  at 
once  good  and  enduring,  and  the  superior  gratification  which 
future  certainty  provides  over  future  uncertainty,  we  easily 
read  into  the  universal  as  a  title  to  higher  reality.    Desire  of 
peace,  rest,  security:  that  is  the  great  motive  of  intellectu- 
alism.    We  might  expect  such  an  irony:    the  view  which 
makes  greatest  parade  of  cold  reason  is  nourished  by  a 
semi-religious  desire.     James  has  called  this  view  "  tender- 
minded  ";   presumably  because  it  is  wounded  by  the  dis- 
agreeable concrete  world  and  sadly  longs  to  attain  the  rest 
of  the  Platonic  heaven.    In  this  aspect  the  motive  becomes 
an  "  other-worldliness." 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     2 27 

But  intellectualism  contains  a  further  motive,  and  here 
intellect  comes  to  its  rights.  A  world  of  universals  has  one 
peculiar  property;  it  loses  much  of  its  dignity  if  it  is  not 
well-knit.  Not  mere  persistence,  but  a  persistence  of  prin- 
ciples and  laws  which  in  their  order  and  system  manifest 
logical  beauty;  If  it  were  not  for  this  aspect  the  name  intel- 
lectualism would  be  undeserved;  we  should  have,  instead, 
mysticism,  or  idealism  in  the  artistic  sense  of  the  word.  The 
parts,  the  various  universals,  must  either  themselves  imply 
one  another,  or  some  must  imply  others,  or  they  must  in 
permutation  and  combination  account  for  the  categories  of 
science.  Not  induction,  but  deduction,  is  in  order.  Implica- 
tion and  other  logical  relations  are  at  a  premium.  Platonism 
led,  as  the  mind  of  its  founder  matured,  to  Py thagoreanism : 
intellectualism  in  a  like  manner  leads  to  mathematism. 
Exact  logic  (i.  e.,  presumably  symbolic  logic)  is  the  key  to 
philosophy,  nay,  is  philosophy.  The  discovery  of  the  inde- 
finable terms,  the  relations  they  take  on,  the  deduction 
therefrom  of  the  categories  of  pure  science  —  that  is  the 
subject-matter  of  philosophy :  the  method  is  the  method  of 
rigid  demonstration,  of  pure  logic. 

These  emotional  preferences  for  the  enduring,  the  sure, 
the  well-knit,  are  then  some  of  the  pillars  of  intellectualism. 
Other  preferences  we  should  expect  it  to  misjudge.  The 
interest  in  change  and  in  humanity  displayed  by  the  prag- 
matist  would  be  interpreted  as  giving  pragmatism  a  whimsi- 
cal or  subjective  cast.  (Cf .  James'  View  of  Truth,  in  Russell, 
Philosophical  Essays.)  Intuitionism  would  be  taken  to  be 
romantic;  idealism  considered  to  be  subjectivism.  This  is 
actually  the  case,  and  is  a  confirmation  of  our  diagnosis; 
for  a  view  based  upon  a  certain  value-attitude  will  always 
misunderstand  and  belittle  a  view  based  upon  a  different 
value-attitude. 


228  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

We  now  pass  to  the  arguments  in  favour  of  this  type. 
Inasmuch  as  the  universal  is  that  which  is  unvarying 
throughout  varying  circumstances,  the  main  argument  for 
Platonism  usually  takes  some  such  form  as  the  following:— 

On  the  one  hand  the  very  fact  of  change  itself  implies  an 
underlying  permanent  subject  of  the  change.  Just  as  you 
cannot  have  motion  without  something  that  moves,  so  you 
cannot  have  change  unless  in  something  which  changes. 
"  This  man  has  changed  "  we  say;  but  that  could  not  be 
true  unless  the  man  himself  were  still  in  some  way  the  same 
man.  Otherwise  the  change  could  not  be  attributed  to  him 
(compare  here  the  argument  of  Kant's  First  Analogy  in  the 
Critique  of  Pure  Reason).  On  the  other  hand,  the  very 
nature  of  description  and  analysis  likewise  implies  changeless 
terms  of  discourse,  concepts  with  fixed  meaning,  as  it  were 
permanent  logical  atoms  out  of  which  judgments  are  com- 
pounded. These  two  statements  are  but  the  objective  and 
subjective  sides  of  one  and  the  same  fact,  viz.,  that  change 
and  complexity,  if  they  are  to  be  understood  at  all,  must  be 
explained  as  the  permutation  and  combination  of  simple, 
ultimate  elements.  In  chemistry,  this  thesis  has  occasioned 
the  atomic  theory;  in  modern  logic  and  mathematics,  it  is 
exemplified  in  the  indefinables,  axioms,  and  postulates;  in 
modern  physics,  in  the  theory  of  electrons.  In  fact,  every 
mature  science,  which  has  grown  far  enough  to  assume 
rigorous  deductive  form,  has  taken  the  shape  of  a  logical 
atomism.  But  the  atoms,  whether  physical  bodies  or  con- 
cepts, are  the  universals,  the  terms  which  enter  now  into  one 
relation,  now  into  another,  without  being  altered  thereby. 

In  recent  parlance,  this  thesis  is  called  the  principle  of  the 
externality  of  relations;  and  it  has  appeared  to  be  the  deadly 
foe  of  that  principle  which  we  found  in  subjectivism,  viz., 
the  internality  of  relations  (Ch.  III).  Mr.  Russell,  one  of  its 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    229 

chief  defenders,  thus  sums  up  the  case  for  the  former  prin- 
ciple and  against  the  latter:  "  In  short,  no  relation  ever 
modifies  either  of  its  terms.  For  if  it  holds  between  A  and 
B,  then  it  is  between  A  and  B  that  it  holds,  and  to  say  that 
it  modifies  A  and  B  is  to  say  that  it  really  holds  between 
different  terms  C  and  D.  To  say  that  two  terms  which  are 
related  would  be  different  if  they  were  not  related,  is  to  say 
something  perfectly  barren;  for  if  they  were  different,  they 
would  be  other,  and  it  would  not  be  the  terms  in  question, 
but  a  different  pair,  that  would  be  unrelated.  The  notion 
that  a  term  can  be  modified  arises  from  neglect  to  observe 
the  eternal  self -identity  of  all  terms  and  all  logical  concepts, 
which  alone  form  the  constituents  of  propositions.  What  is 
called  modification  consists  merely  in  having  at  one  time, 
but  not  at  another,  some  specific  relation  to  some  other 
specific  term ;  but  the  term  which  sometimes  has  and  some- 
times has  not  the  relation  in  question  must  be  unchanged, 
otherwise  it  would  not  be  that  term  which  had  ceased  to  have 
the  relation."  (B.  Russell,  Principles  of  Mathematics,  vol.  I, 
p.  448.) 

This  is  the  same  line  of  reasoning,  be  it  noted,  which  may 
be  used  to  prove  a  first  cause  or  an  irreducible  substance,  - 
in  short,  any  last  thing  or  permanent  standard,  anything 
which  is  independent  of  other  things  in  the  sense  of  not 
changing  when  they  change.  (Cf.  Aristotle,  Metaphysics, 
i.  lesser,  ch.  2  (Bonn's  tr.,  p.  49.)  As  applied  to  the 
problem  of  knowledge,  it  leads  to  the  doctrine  of  independent 
real  objects,  unchanged  by  our  seeing,  thinking  or  otherwise 
knowing  them.  Hence  the  realists  are  likely  to  be  better 
intellectualists  than  the  idealists.  But  Platonism  has  many 
forms,  as  universals  are  of  various  kinds.  Common  to  them 
all  is  the  logical  need  of  a  TTOV  orco ;  their  distinctness  lies  in 
the  purpose  for  which  that  irov  <TTU>  is  needed.  How  much 
does  the  argument  weigh  ? 


230  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

It  proceeds  by  a  reductio  ad  absurdum.  If  you  admit  that 
A  and  B,  when  related,  are  changed  to  C  and  D,  then  you 
eventually  get  into  an  endless  regress :  for  no  longer  A  and 
B,  but  C  and  D,  are  related,  and  then  since  C  and  D  are 
modified  by  their  relation,  no  longer  C  and  D  are  related, 
but  E  and  F,  and  so  on  forever.  Now  this  must  be  avoided  - 
hence  A  and  B  when  related  are  unchanged.  But  whence 
this  certainty  that  the  infinite  regress  must  be  avoided  ? 
Skepticism,  it  seems,  is  the  alternative.  Well,  why  not  be 
skeptics  ?  Here  no  ground  can  be  assigned  except  that  we 
are  not.  Whether  this  is  ascribed  to  an  immediate  objective 
revelation,  to  a  Fichtean  act  of  choice,  or  a  Kantian  postu- 
late for  purposes  of  action  —  or  anything  you  please  —  one 
and  all  of  these  descriptions  amount  just  to  the  fact  that  we 
do  accept  last  terms,  fixed  concepts,  entities  entering  un- 
changed into  relations.  The  above  argument  then  proves 
nothing:  it  simply  brings  to  light  that  we  do  think  in  a  cer- 
tain way.  It  would  seem  better  to  acknowledge  this  out- 
right than  to  dress  it  up  in  the  form  of  a  demonstration.  The 
force  of  the  position  does  not  lie  in  its  logical  cogency,  but  in 
its  actual  credibility.  It  might  become  the  foundation  of 
voluntarism  (does  indeed  so,  with  Fichte  and  Miinsterberg) 
or  of  intuitionism,  or  what  not.  There  is  here  no  ground  for 
emphasizing  the  authority  of  logic  or  reason  over  any  other 
human  faculty;  condemning,  for  example,  a  pragmatic 
basis  for  Platonism,  or  an  intuitive  one.  "  Universals  we 
believe  in  because  we  need  them  for  our  thought  "  so  might 
a  pragmatist  speak  —  so  too  proceeds  the  argument  of  Mr. 
Russell.  And  we  might  as  properly  say  with  Descartes  that 
we  accept  universals  because  they  appear  before  us  clear 
and  distinct  in  lumine  naturali. 

That  there  are  universals,  then,  we  cannot  help  admitting, 
but  it  is  not  implied  in  anything  else  unless  we  decide  to 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     231 

imply  it,  nor  is  it  demonstrable  by  reason's  laws.  It  simply 
is  true,  as  a  sort  of  ultimate  datum.  It  rests  upon  no  reductio 
ad  absurdum  of  an  opponent  who  insists  that  there  is  nothing 
permanent.  And  as  its  truth  does  not  depend  upon  the 
suicide  of  the  opposing  view,  we  may  well  ask,  is  there  not 
really  an  even  balance  between  the  belief  in  universals  and 
the  belief  that  all  things  change  ?  May  not  the  permanent 
indefinables  themselves  take  on  changes,  superimposed 
upon  their  unchanging  cores,  as  they  pass  through  the  vicis- 
situdes of  their  concrete  milieu  ?  May  not  the  principle  of 
externality  be  true  at  the  same  time  with  the  principle  of  the 
internality  of  the  relations  ? 

If  we  acknowledged  that  an  atom  A ,  when  brought  into  a 
certain  relation  R  to  another  atom  B,  was  thereby  modified 
so  as  to  become  C,  what  would  result  ?  We  should  say,  B 
is  no  longer  related  to  A,  but  to  C  instead.  Now  we  could 
just  as  well  say,  B  is  still  related  to  the  old  A ,  but  that  A  has 
taken  on  a  new  qualification,  in  addition  to  its  former  prop- 
erties, while  remaining  otherwise  the  same  as  before.  ('A 
has  changed  into  C  "  means,  "  A  is  what  it  was  before,  plus 
a  new  quality  #,"  where  #  is  a  resultant  of  the  relation  be- 
tween the  old  A  and  B.  And  this  new  C  (=  A-\-x)  is  not 
such  as  to  replace  the  relation  originally  asserted  of  A  and 
B,  by  one  between  B  and  C.  Once  admit  that  the  modifica- 
tion may  be  an  enlargement  of  A  without  modification  of  A 
throughout,  and  A  is  not  threatened  by  the  infinite  process; 
for  the  original  relation  is  not  annulled.  Hence  the  infinite 
process  has  lost  its  sting.  And  the  defender  of  "  externality  " 
might  well  admit  this,  for  he  can  grant  that  one  part  of  any 
entity  might  remain  unchanged.  Of  course,  the  advocate  of 
"  internality  "  may  reply,  "  but  my  principle,  which  you 
profess  to  accept,  says  that  the  original  properties  of  A  must 
also  be  modified  by  the  relation.  You  have  not  modified 


232  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

them;  you  have  only  placed  a  new  content,  x,  in  external 
juxtaposition  to  them.  But  the  x  must  in  turn  affect  the 
original  A."  We  answer  "All  right;  let  it  be  so.  Let  the  A 
be  modified  by  the  addition  of  x  into  A+y."  All  we  need 
to  do  is  to  admit  the  modification,  and  write  it  down  as  the 
original  plus  some  new  attributes.  Then  the  "  internalist  " 
will  once  more  protest  that  the  original  remains  still  un- 
modified, and  we  shall  once  more  admit  a  modification, 
writing  it  down  as  A+z,  etc.  At  every  stej>  we  can  admit  his 
claim;  as  fast  as  he  urges  that  it  is  not  satisfied,  we  can 
satisfy  it.  The  similarity  of  this  logical  situation  to  the  old 
issue  of  subjectivism  with  objectivism  is  apparent.  Either 
side  may  grant  the  claims  of  the  other  and  then  proceed  to 
interpret  the  whole  thing  in  its  own  way.  Neither  side  can 
ever  quench  the  desire  of  the  other  for  further  conquest,  but 
on  the  other  hand  neither  side  can  deny  the  justice  of  the 
other's  principle.  Both  internality  and  externality  may  be 
granted,  to  any  extent  that  is  wished;  and  at  no  stage  of  the 
process  does  one  side  rule  out  the  claim  of  the  other.  But 
just  as  soon  as  the  internalist  would  prohibit  the  demand  for 
an  unchanged  substratum  persisting  through  the  changes,  he 
goes  against  that  ultimate  datum  we  spoke  of  above;  and 
just  as  soon  as  the  externalist  denies  the  influence  of  relations 
upon  their  terms  he  runs  counter  to  that  principle  of  in- 
ternality whose  soundness  we  bore  witness  to  in  Chapter  III. 
The  attempted  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  internality  is  a 
failure.  Internality  of  relations  may  be  admitted  at  every 
step  of  the  analysis,  but  it  cannot  rule  out  externality.  The 
penalty  has  lost  its  force.  Intellectualism  surreptitiously 
understands  internality  in  such  a  way  as  to  forbid  permanent 
terms,  and  then  goes  on  to  condemn  it  for  not  admitting 
permanence.  But  such  understanding  is  quite  gratuitous, 
and  only  makes  the  trouble  which  intellectualism  finds.  It 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     233 

reminds  us  of  the  proverb  "  Give  a  dog  a  bad  name  and  hang 
him  "  and  is,  in  fact,  but  the  old  argument  from  damnation 
once  more. 

And  we  might  have  suspected  the  Platonist's  anathema, 
if  only  because  it  appears  to  prove  too  much.  If  it  were 
true,  there  would  be  no  "  internal  "  relations  at  all.  Bring- 
ing an  object  —  say  a  chair  —  into  a  new  situation,  as  for 
instance  a  fire  —  would  not  alter  it.  Now  perhaps  the 
ultimate  atoms  of  the  chair  do  persist  unaltered:  but  are 
they  alone  to  be  considered  as  real  ?  Must  we  condemn  as 
unreal  whatever  suffers  change  ?  It  would  seem  that  we 
ought  to  do  so,  and  in  fact  that  is  just  what  Platonism 
always  tends  to  do.  It  slights  the  vanishing,  the  particular; 
it  dubs  it  appearance,  unreal.  But  this  condemnation  can  be 
logically  justified  only  if  the  particular  instance  is  wholly 
defined  in  terms  of  universals. 

This  definition  of  individuality  in  conceptual  terms  is  the 
task  which  now  confronts  intellectualism.  As  Great  Objec- 
tivism accounts  for  conscious  minds  by  defining  them  in 
terms  of  objects;  as  idealism  reduces  objects  and  laws  to 
terms  of  the  social  mind ;  so  Platonism,  if  it  be  true  to  itself, 
must  define  the  individual  as  a  certain  function  of  universals. 
Thus,  a  particular  oak  tree  in  a  certain  field  is  itself  and  no 
other  because  it  is  a  certain  combination  or  "  logical  prod- 
uct "  of  qualities  or  universals.  Other  trees  are  different 
combinations  or  products.  The  first  tree  is  the  logical  prod- 
uct of  green  and  oaken  and  150  years  old  and  owned  by  X,  and 
so  forth;  the  second  tree  is  the  product  of  green,  oaken,  125 
years  old,  owned  by  X,  etc. ;  a  third  tree  is  the  product  of  a 
different  group  of  adjectives.  The  individual  is  a  mode  of 
the  universal  (as  with  Spinoza),  a  function  or  relation  of 
concepts:  individuals  which  have  no  distinction  between 
their  qualities  are  mutually  indiscernible  and  identical. 


234  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

But  as  Great  Objectivism  found  its  surd  in  mind,  may  we 
not  expect  a  similar  fate  to  meet  Platonism  in  the  individ- 
uals ?  For  notice :  no  finite  number  of  universals  combined 
will  provide  that  there  shall  be  only  one  case  of  the  combina- 
tion. Why  not  two,  three,  or  more,  just  exactly  alike  ? 
Perhaps  the  difference  might  be  incommunicable,  just  bare 
position,  "  thisness  "  —  as  many  thinkers  have  said.  Plato- 
nism cannot  disprove  this  alternative.  And  as  it  cannot  re- 
fute an  indescribable  difference,  so  it  cannot  generate  the 
one  out  of  the  class.  It  suffers  from  the  fault  analogous  to  its 
rival,  mysticism's,  which  cannot  get  the  many  from  the  one. 
The  universal  is  that  which  permits  an  indefinite  number  of 
instances,  and  out  of  universals  can  be  generated  no  prin- 
ciple which  limits  the  number.  Of  course,  in  a  given  world, 
where  the  number  of  existing  objects  is  finite  and  unchange- 
able, the  product  of  two  universals  would  have  fewer 
instances  than  one  of  those  universals.  In  a  given  navy 
which  can  be  neither  increased  nor  diminished,  there  will  be 
a  certain  number  of  steamships:  there  will  be  a  smaller 
number  of  steamships  which  have  a  certain  added  property 
—  say,  of  mounting  seventeen-inch  guns  —  fewer  still  which 
in  addition  to  this  property  have  that  of  carrying  the  com- 
mander of  a  fleet  —  etc.,  etc.  And  so  we  tend  to  believe 
that  as  universals  are  combined  more  and  more,  there  is  a 
gradual  approach  to,  and  final  attainment  of,  individuality. 
And  there  is,  provided  we  are  dealing  with  a  finite  number  of 
individuals  and  universals.  But  the  concept  of  the  universal, 
that  of  which  there  may  be  any  number  of  instances,  cannot 
by  shaking  be  made  to  precipitate  the  notion  of  a  certain 
number  of  instances,  still  less  of  one  instance.  As  no  finite 
sum  makes  infinity,  so  no  logical  product  of  infinites  makes  a 
finite  number.  The  individual  must  be  considered  as  unat- 
tainable by  any  finite  combination  of  universals:  the  limit 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     235 

rather,  approached  by  such  combination  as  it  increases  in 
complexity.  The  combination  can  be  made  ever  greater  by 
discovery  of  more  and  more  properties  of  the  individual; 
and  it  can  thus  differ  from  the  real  individual's  nature  by  a 
difference  less  than  any  assigned  difference.  For  such  a 
difference  can  be  added  to  the  combination  and  then  the 
combination  no  longer  differs  to  that  extent  from  the  real 
individual.  Hence  the  individual  may  fitly  be  called  the 
limit,  or  the  surd,  of  the  combined  universals. 

Platonism  knows  that  it  cannot  account  for  the  fact  that 
there  are  particulars;  hence  it  does  not  like  to  admit  them 
into  its  purview,  and  we  find  statements  like  those  quoted 
from  Messrs.  Russell,  Bradley,  et  al.  Nevertheless  Plato- 
nism is  not  refuted  by  this  inadequacy.  Individuals  are  its 
true  critical  points,  and  it  becomes  emasculated  at  those 
points;  but  it  still  lives.  Everything  about  an  individual 
can  be  defined  in  universals;  yes,  even  the  phrase  "  this  and 
no  other  "  is  itself  a  group  of  universals  (to  borrow  from 
Hegel).  The  paint  of  universality  can  be  daubed  over 
everything  —  as  was  the  case  with  subjectivity  too.  Name 
something,  if  you  can,  about  the  individual  which  eludes 
conceptual  description,  i.  e.,  the  universal.  You  can  do 
nothing  but  repeat  "  individuality  "  which  is  a  name  for  the 
fact  that  what  we  have  asked  for  is  unknown.  Or,  again, 
will,  desire,  caprice,  or  other  terms  with  which  Royce's 
studies  of  individuality  (The  Conception  of  God,  pp.  217-271) 
have  made  us  familiar  —  these  are  describable  criteria,  and 
thus  reducible  to  terms  of  universals  —  except  for  the  ever 
outstanding  "  individuality."  This  however  is  from  the 
point  of  view  of  conceptual  definition  a  true  ding  an  sich. 
The  logic  of  the  present  issue  is  exactly  the  same  as  that  of 
our  previous  issues.  The  very  minute  when  something  is 
discovered  about  individuality  which  has  not  yet  been 


236  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

brought  within  our  definition,  that  something  is  described 
and  thus  brought  within.  Yet  always  something  more  is 
left.  Which  side  then  has  the  advantage  ?  Neither:  it  is  an 
endless  seesaw.  But  that  means  that  both  sides  are  cor- 
rect. Individuality  is  forever  beyond  universals  in  the  sense 
that  they  are  not  adequate  to  account  for  it:  but  as  long  as 
it  is  taken  to  have  any  meaning,  that  meaning  lies  in  univer- 
sals. Here  intellectualism  meets  its  opposite  extreme,  nom- 
inalism; and  it  cannot  refute  it  and  reduce  the  individuals 
to  unreality  per  se. 

Before  bringing  up  a  second  critical  point  from  which  the 
type  suffers,  we  ought  to  square  ourselves  with  the  old  ques- 
tion, whether  the  universals  are  ante  rem  or  only  in  re. 
Granted  that  there  are  real  universals,  are  they  so  to  say 
in  a  separate  world,  as  Plato  thought,  or  wholly  knotted  in 
with  the  concrete  particulars  of  this  world,  or  neither,  but 
only  in  our  minds  ?  Strictly  logical  intellectualism,  standing 
as  it  does  for  independence,  should  accept  the  first,  the 
ante  rem  view.  And  if  our  analysis  of  the  principle  of 
external  relations  is  correct,  independence  is  the  fact.  For 
we  found  no  reason  for  thinking  that  the  opposed  principle 
of  "  internality  "  could  refute  it;  and  it  meets  a  certain 
ultimate  intellectual  ideal.  Hence  we  should  be  willing  to 
admit  that  the  universals  are  separate  existences.  But  it 
must  be  borne  in  mind  that  our  present  findings  are  sub- 
ject to  modification  by  the  results  we  may  gain  from  later 
types.  This  is,  indeed,  a  general  remark  which  should  not 
be  forgotten  throughout  our  whole  investigation. 

Another  critical  point  of  this  view  is  the  fact  of  change. 
If  universals  cannot  generate  the  individual,  neither  can  the 
permanent,  which  is  the  universal  in  its  temporal  aspect, 
generate  change.  To  be  sure,  every  state  of  the  changing 
thing  can  be  abstracted  out  and  put  into  terms  of  universals. 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     237 

The  successive  positions  of  the  moving  object  are  static  posi- 
tions, defined  in  spatial  terms,  and  motion  itself  may  be 
defined  as  the  occupation  by  one  and  the  same  body  of  a  cer- 
tain position  at  one  time  and  of  another  position  at  a  later 
time.  This  conceptual  definition  of  motion  is  quite  like  the 
definition  of  the  object  proffered  by  idealism,  or  that  of  con- 
sciousness furnished  by  Great  Objectivism.  It  is  true 
enough,  but  it  is  inadequate.  It  does  not  explain  how  it  can 
be  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  time  at  all,  and  time  means 
change.  It  means  that  a  certain  moment  or  brief  duration 
now  is  and  now  no  longer  is  —  and  thus  has  changed  in  re- 
spect to  its  existence.  But  universals  always  exist  (or  if  you 
prefer  "  subsist  "  or  "  are  ")  and  no  shadow  of  differentia- 
tion of  this  property  into  two  such  categories  as  "  are  "  and 
"  are  not  "  is  discernible  in  such  blank  monotony  of  being. 
To  say  that  motion  or  change  are  relations  between  earlier 
and  later  positions  or  states  of  one  thing,  is  not  to  define  the 
nature  of  such  a  relation,  but  to  beg  the  very  quale  we  wish 
to  understand.  What  relations  are  they  ?  Precisely  the 
transeunt  ones  that  have  occasioned  all  the  trouble.  It  is 
not  explained  how  they  can  be  found  in  a  Platonic  world. 
The  actual  world  is  simply  an  additional,  unintelligible  ex- 
crescence. Of  course  it  is  open  to  anyone  to  say  that  phi- 
losophy does  not  care  about  the  particular  facts  of  the  world 
or  the  changes  that  occur  in  it;  but  is  interested  only  in  the 
star-like  ideas.  Such  a  choice  of  subject  remains  arbitrary, 
and  there  is  no  reason  why  a  man  might  not  declare  that 
philosophy  is  interested  only  in  the  particulars  and  the 
changes  that  occur.  Why  is  not  philosophy  just  as  much 
concerned  with  the  actual  as  with  the  ideal  and  purely  ra- 
tional ?  Meanwhile  the  original  problem  of  philosophy  — 
as  we  saw  it  in  Chapter  I  —  is  forgotten;  no  map  of  the 
universe  as  a  whole  is  provided,  for  half  of  it  is  left  out;  and 


238  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

there  is  no  explanation  of  the  more  or  less  rough,  irregular, 
inexact  things  which  confront  us  at  every  turn.  These 
actualities  are  the  rocks  against  which  intellectualism  breaks 
into  froth  and  foam.  But,  as  ardent  anti-intellectualists 
like  James  have  failed  to  see,  intellectualism  is  not  refuted 
thereby.  It  passes  into  a  vaporous  stage  beyond  its  critical 
point ;  but  it  never  is  annulled.  As  all  objects  can  formally  be 
brought  under  the  shadow  of  the  subject,  so  all  change,  suc- 
cession, particularity,  can  be  analyzed  into  momentary  static 
states;  even  as  any  moving  thing  may  be  photographed. 
It  is  those  states,  but  it  is  also  something  more.  If  you  ask 
"  What  more  ?  "  you  can  be  answered  by  the  interpolation 
of  further  connecting  states  —  and  so  on  forever.  As  often 
as  you  claim  to  have  dissected  motion,  so  often  you  will  be 
told  that  the  relation  between  the  successive  states  has  eluded 
you;  and  as  often  as  you  analyze  that  relation  between  into 
further  successive  states,  the  objection  will  be  repeated. 
Both  sides  are  correct  enough.  The  relation  can  always  be 
analyzed  into  transition-states,  just  as  a  line  joining  two 
points  can  be  analyzed  into  points  —  and  so  on  forever. 
And  the  states  always  imply  a  relation  between  them,  as  the 
points  are  connected  by  a  line.  The  tilt  is  endless,  because 
the  analysis  is  never  adequate,  yet  always  true.  So  it  is, 
then,  as  regards  the  issue  between  the  Platonic  universals 
and  the  concrete  changes.  The  former  can  be  used  to  de- 
scribe the  latter,  but  they  cannot  fully  succeed  in  the 
endeavour;  they  are  infertile. 

On  the  scientific  side  of  intellectualism  another  critical 
point  appears.  That  type  views  the  world  of  universals  as 
a  well-knit  one.  The  various  properties,  etc.,  are  deduced 
by  logical  necessity  (i.  e.,  by  the  axioms  and  principles  of 
reasoning)  from  the  indefinables  and  their  relations.  Hence 
all  is  determined  to  be  what  it  is,  and  there  seems  no  loop- 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    239 

hole  for  letting  in  alternative  possibilities,  chance,  the  unde- 
termined and  free  —  for  example,  the  free  human  act.  We 
recall  Spinoza's  mechanical  universe.  Freedom  of  will  in 
such  a  view  has  to  be  reinterpreted  to  mean  action  which 
follows  necessarily  from  one's  own  inner  nature.  Now  in  the 
world  of  sense-observation  we  do  not  wholly  verify  this 
strict  and  well-knit  character.  No  event  perfectly  mani- 
fests obedience  to  the  universals  of  science,  the  "  laws  of 
Nature."  Bodies  do  not  fall  in  quite  straight  lines,  measure- 
ments do  not  fully  bear  out  the  law  of  pressure  in  gases,  etc., 
etc.  How  then  does  our  type  adjust  itself  to  this  awkward 
situation  ?  Well  enough,  indeed.  It  declares  that  the  uni- 
versals which  are  present  in  Nature  are  so  many  and  so 
complex  that  every  particular  event  is  a  compound  of  a  vast 
number,  a  resultant  of  indefinitely  many  laws.  If  the  laws 
we  know  do  not  suffice  to  account  for  the  behaviour  of  a 
living  body,  a  dog  or  a  man,  then  we  say  there  are  other  laws 
acting  undiscovered.  But  what  if  determinism  thus  adapts 
itself  to  the  apparent  irregularity  of  the  concrete  world  ? 
It  is  quite  formal;  it  has  become  so  abstract  as  to  be  utterly 
infertile  for  prediction. 

The  issue  of  freedom  (or  chance)  vs.  determinism  is  not 
treated  as  an  empirical  one.  It  is  not  that  we  demonstrate 
the  laws  by  observing  uniformity  in  events  —  day  following 
day,  year,  year,  the  same  conditions  in  the  laboratory 
producing  the  same  results  again  and  again.  However  ir- 
regular the  sequence  of  events  might  be,  one  could  still  be- 
lieve them  governed  by  laws  at  bottom.  One's  own  thoughts 
are  often  chaotic  enough,  yet  one  may  believe  them  subject 
to  law.  It  is  always  open  to  us  to  say  that  the  laws  are  so 
many  and  the  conditions  so  complex  as  to  necessitate  ap- 
parent irregularity  in  the  resultant  events.  It  is  true  that 
we  should  not  notice  the  presence  of  law  but  for  fairly  evident 


240  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

uniformities;  but  an  intellectualist  might  accept  the  pres- 
ence of  law  where  he  could  not  observe  it.  The  real  ground 
upon  which  determinists  believe  that  all  events  are  necessary 
is,  that  that  appears  to  be  a  postulate  of  reason.  It  seems 
to  go  against  all  the  nature  of  our  intellect,  to  believe  that 
an  event  can  happen  without  a  cause.  An  a  priori  "  prin- 
ciple of  sufficient  reason  "  is  invoked,  and  being  dignified 
with  the  title  of  principle,  at  once  assumes  sway  over  our 
minds.  To  be  sure,  determinists  appeal  to  the  progress 
science  has  made,  in  explaining  one  by  one  events  which 
used  to  be  regarded  as  inexpli cable.  The  plagues  which  were 
once  unaccountable  divine  visitations  have  been  traced  to 
germs;  the  caprices  of  man's  thought  have  been  accounted 
for  by  laws  of  association;  dreams  are  explained  by  the 
state  of  the  organism  or  the  "  suppressed-wish  "  of  Freud; 
and  the  man  who  thinks  that  he  freely  chooses  to  vote  for  a 
candidate  finds  that  his  choice  was  dictated  by  invincible 
prejudices.  The  cumulative  weight  of  all  this  causal  ex- 
planation, increasing  in  geometrical  ratio  as  it  does  with  the 
advance  of  science,  is  indeed  most  impressive.  But  though 
the  argument  is  convincing,  it  is  not  sound.  It  works  by 
overpowering  the  reason,  not  by  dissuading  it.  It  is  quite 
possible  that  we  discover  an  ever  greater  number  of  causes 
operating  in  the  world,  while  yet  in  the  operation  of  each 
cause  there  be  a  slight  divergence  from  law.  In  a  line  an  inch 
long  we  may  discover  by  subdivision  more  and  more  parts 
—  yet  never  do  we  succeed  in  reducing  the  line  to  points  and 
nothing  but  points.  The  case  of  causal  explanation  is  quite 
analogous.  For  a  single  fact  such  as  the  path  of  a  falling 
raindrop  we  may  bring  to  light  one  cause  after  another  — 
gravitation,  air  pressure,  wind,  evaporation,  etc.,  yet  each 
of  these  particular  causes  itself  might  exhibit  a  slight  devi- 
ation from  perfect  law  —  for  it  is  well  known  that  no  perfect 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    241 

case  of  law  has  ever  been  found.  It  is  quite  possible,  nay  it  is 
probable,  to  judge  from  past  observations,  that  every  par- 
ticular cause  that  is  acting  on  the  raindrop,  no  matter  how 
carefully  isolated  and  measured,  would  be  found  to  vary 
slightly  from  exact  obedience  to  law.  There  is  no  empirical 
guarantee  whatever  that  in  the  last  analysis  the  same  cause 
always  produces  the  same  effect.  Nearly  the  same,  we  grant, 
of  course,  and  more  nearly  the  same  the  more  the  cause  is 
isolated;  but  there  is  no  proof  that  the  deviation  from  law 
approaches  zero  as  its  limit.  It  only  approaches  something 
very  small  as  its  limit.  But  for  clear  thinking  nearly  the  same 
is  quite  other  than  exactly  the  same,  and  determinism  claims 
a  regularity  which  in  the  last  analysis  is  perfectly  exact.  The 
cumulative  argument  for  determinism  can  no  more  rule  out 
chance  variations  than  shortening  a  line  can  make  it  into  a 
point.  If  we  based  our  opinion  on  empirical  grounds,  in- 
deed, we  should  say  that  every  one  of  the  infinite  causes 
which  combine  to  produce  a  certain  event  is  itself  a  little 
bit  irregular  and  unaccountable  —  for  that  is  always  the 
case  with  the  causes  we  know  and  measure.  But  we  do  not 
wish  here  to  settle  this  fascinating  question;  merely  to 
point  out  that  determinism  has  given  no  more  than  an  a 
priori  solution;  correct,  perhaps,  but  indemonstrable.  It 
appeals  to  a  feeling  of  reverence  for  law,  an  a  priori  postulate 
which  is  not  only  unprovable,  but  by  some  serious  thinkers 
denied.  And  since  this  law,  being  so  a  priori,  can  be  made  to 
fit  any  sort  of  irregularity  that  might  be  found  in  human 
life,  it  is  indifferent  to  particular  occurrences.  The  knowl- 
edge that  all  my  deeds  are  determined  does  not  tell  me  which 
way  I  am  going  to  decide  in  a  given  alternative.  In  other 
words,  determinism  never  accounts  for  any  particular  event. 
Every  specific  act  of  a  human  will,  every  event  in  inorganic 
nature,  is  as  a  complete  individual  quite  unexplained;  each 


242  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

forms  a  critical  point,  and  the  relation  of  determinism 
toward  these  critical  points  is  similar  to  the  relation  of  the 
preceding  types  to  their  critical  points.  The  theory  can  be 
so  extended  as  to  fit  them,  but  in  doing  so  it  exhibits  its 
infertility  to  account  for  them.  It  fails  to  do  that  which  it 
set  out  to  do,  viz.,  to  propound  a  universal  working  theory 
of  the  order  of  the  real  world. 

It  is  a  consequence  of  the  formalism  of  the  deterministic 
view,  that  it  cannot  refute  its  opponent.  If  one  waxes  indig- 
nant over  determinism's  inability  to  explain  the  particulars, 
it  is  quite  possible  to  retort  to  the  whole  position,  that  all 
law  is  at  bottom  a  chance  coincidence,  a  fortuitous  recur- 
rence of  similarities.  For  just  as  irregularities  are  explained 
by  determinism  as  due  to  the  enormously  complex  combina- 
tion of  laws,  so  the  reverse  procedure  is  logically  open,  viz., 
to  declare  that  the  seeming  regularity  of  causal  sequences  is 
due  to  an  extraordinarily  complicated  heaping  together  of 
chance  events.  No  one,  to  our  knowledge,  has  done  this,* 
because  we  love  law  and  order ;  but  there  would  be  nothing 
in  it  which  would  contradict  our  experience  or  our  science. 
Such  chance  would  of  course  not  explain  our  world.  It  could 
not  show  any  ground  for  our  scientific  predictions,  in  which 
we  believe  more  or  less  absolutely.  It  would  find  its  critical 
point,  in  turn,  in  those  innumerable  cases  where  we  are 
justifiably  certain  of  the  future  —  as  in  foretelling  an  eclipse, 
or  calculating  upon  a  man's  defending  himself  when  at- 
tacked, etc.  But  though  it  could  not  account  for  such  in- 
stances, it  could  reiterate  its  position  concerning  them,  and 
declare  that  they  are  simply  odd  coincidences.  And  since 
there  is  no  limit  to  oddity,  it  could  always  stretch  its  elastic 

*  Mr.  C.  S.  Peirce  came  nearest  of  all  men  to  doing  it,  perhaps  (The 
Monist,  vol.  2,  pp.  321-323),  but  even  he  assumed  a  "habit-taking  tendency  " 
among  things  —  which  is  equivalent  to  assuming  an  irreducible  element  of 
law. 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     243 

concept  of  chance  to  cover  any  coincidence,  however  incred- 
ible. For  intellectualistic  methods,  the  issue  between 
determinism  and  chance  is  without  end. 

In  the  Platonic  world  all  can  be  deductively  arranged  from 
the  indefinables  and  axioms;  but  that  has  no  bearing  what- 
ever upon  the  stream  of  particular  and  irregular  events  in 
time,  and  it  leaves  —  deliberately  with  some  thinkers, 
unwittingly  with  others  —  one  half  of  the  world  a  mystery. 

Must  we  repeat  that  we  do  not  say  there  is  no  such  Pla- 
tonic world  ?  On  the  contrary,  we  have  seen  that  the  argu- 
ment for  the  universals  is  sound.  It  is  not  a  demonstration 
in  the  sense  of  discursive  proof,  but  it  is  a  valid  appeal  to 
inspection.  But  as  a  reform  of  philosophy's  perennial  diffi- 
culties, the  type  is  analogous  to  the  procedure  of  one  who 
would  reform  human  society  by  fleeing  to  the  desert.  It  is 
an  escape  rather  than  a  solution.  It  discovers  a  new  world, 
but  neither  tells  how  that  world  is  related  to  the  old  one  nor 
sheds  any  light  upon  the  old  one.  It  cannot  explain  in- 
dividuality, or  change,  or  motion;  it  cannot  from  its  doc- 
trine of  determinism  enable  us  to  foretell  the  future,  and  it 
cannot  account  for  the  fact  that  the  universals  are  always 
imperfectly  manifested  in  the  concrete,  that  laws  are  only 
approximately  verified.  It  appears  to  define  motion  and 
change  by  redefining  motion  and  change  so  as  to  leave  out 
the  element  of  transeuncy,  that  is,  by  treating  instead  their 
pale  Platonic  analogues.  And  by  this  one-sided  procedure 
it  is  sure  to  produce,  in  true  Hegelian  fashion,  a  reaction  in 
favour  of  the  dynamic,  the  concrete,  the  immediately  felt, 
the  practical.  Such  a  reaction  forms  our  next  type. 

ANTI-!NTELLECTUALISM,  OR  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

This  is  a  broad  stream,  and  it  flows  closer  to  the  public 
places  than  any  other;  it  has  democratic  affiliations,  being 


244  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

of  quite  opposite  temper  to  the  aristocratic  instincts  of  the 
Platonist.  Such  empiricists  as  Bergson,  James,  and  Dewey 
may  almost  be  said  to  be  popularly  known;  one  hears  of 
them  in  the  novels  of  the  day,  and  they  are,  for  philosophers, 
very  widely  read.  The  banks  of  the  stream  are,  perhaps,  not 
so  clearly  defined  as  some  we  have  followed.  We  might  say 
it  is  swampy  at  the  edges ;  but  swampy  ground  may  be  fer- 
tile, and  what  the  stream  lacks  of  clear-cut  boundary  will, 
it  is  hoped,  be  compensated  by  the  fertility  it  contributes  to 
the  valleys  which  it  irrigates. 

We  said  there  were  three  subdivisions  under  Great  Objec- 
tivism, to  be  sure,  and  it  now  looks  as  if  there  were  only  two: 
intellectualism  and  empiricism.  But  the  latter  has  two 
forms,  distinct  and  hostile  except  in  their  treatment  of  the 
common  enemy,  viz.,  pragmatism  and  intuitionism.  These 
share  the  antipathy  to  such  transcendental  entities  as  the 
universals,  to  the  remote  Platonic  heaven  and  the  static 
generally;  "  static  "  becomes  with  them  a  term  of  reproach 
—  as  when  they  characterize  the  Absolute  of  Hegel  by  that 
adjective.  They  also  share  the  acceptance  of  time,  change, 
and  the  concrete  particulars  of  the  world  as  ultimately  real. 
These  two  points  are  their  common  root,  radical  empiricism: 
the  way  in  which  they  branch  off  from  that  root  shall  be 
later  described.  We  begin  with  the  root  and  then  take  up 
the  branches. 

On  the  negative  side,  the  type  opposes  the  pure  concepts 
of  Plato  and  Mr.  Russell,  the  mathematically  constructed 
universe  of  Spinoza,  the  transcendental  Ego  of  Kant,  and 
all  such  entities  which  are  above  or  beneath  the  temporal 
flow  of  events.  The  Great  Self  of  the  idealists,  uniting  and 
relating  the  sense-data,  and  itself  outside  those  data;  the 
ding-an-sich;  the  external  objects'  of  the  representative 
theory  of  knowledge  which  are  never  in  but  always  implied 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     245 

by  our  sense-impressions  —  all  these  transcendent  things  are 
per  se  not  real  —  or  if  they  are,  they  may  be  neglected.  To 
all  intents  and  purposes,  they  are  not.  Such  reality  as  these 
great  principles  have  can  be  rendered  wholly  into  terms 
of  our  every-day  experience.  This  type  is,  in  truth,  that 
positive  side  of  the  "Pure-Experience"  doctrine  mentioned 
in  Chapter  IV. 

"  In  point  of  fact  "  said  James  of  the  conceptual  realm 
"  it  is  far  less  an  account  of  this  actual  world  than  a  clear 
addition  built  upon  it,  a  classic  sanctuary  in  which  the 
rationalist  fancy  may  take  refuge  from  the  intolerably 
confused  and  Gothic  character  which  mere  facts  present. 
It  is  no  explanation  of  our  concrete  universe,  it  is  another 
thing  altogether,  a  substitute  for  it,  a  remedy,  a  way  of 
escape. 

"  Its  temperament,  if  I  may  use  the  word  temperament 
here,  is  utterly  alien  to  the  temperament  of  existence  in  the 
concrete  "  (Meaning  of  Truth,  p.  22).  Intellectualism,  then, 
can  scarcely  furnish  a  valuable  map  of  reality.  "  Rational- 
ism tends  to  emphasize  universals  and  to  make  wholes  prior 
to  parts  in  the  order  of  logic  as  well  as  in  that  of  being.  Em- 
piricism, on  the  contrary,  lays  the  explanatory  stress  upon 
the  part,  the  element,  the  individual,  and  treats  the  whole  as 
a  collection  and  the  universal  as  an  abstraction.  ...  To 
be  radical,  an  empiricism  must  neither  admit  into  its  con- 
structions any  element  that  is  not  directly  experienced,  nor 
exclude  from  them  any  element  that  is  directly  experienced. 
For  such  a  philosophy,  the  relations  that  connect  experiences 
(viz.,  the  universals,  the  transcendental  ego,  etc.}  must  them- 
selves be  experienced  relations,  and  any  kind  of  relation  ex- 
perienced must  be  accounted  as  '  real '  as  anything  else  in  the 
system.  .  .  .  Now,  ordinary  empiricism,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  conjunctive  and  disjunctive  relations  present  them- 


246  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

selves  as  being  fully  coordinate  parts  of  experience,  has 
always  shown  a  tendency  to  do  away  with  the  connections 
of  things,  and  to  insist  most  on  the  disjunctions.  Berkeley's 
nominalism,  Hume's  statement  that  whatever  things  we  dis- 
tinguish are  as  '  loose  and  separate  '  as  if  they  had  '  no 
manner  of  connection,'  James  Mill's  denial  that  similars 
have  anything  '  really  '  in  common,  the  resolution  of  the 
causal  tie  into  habitual  sequence  .  .  .  and  the  general 
pulverization  of  all  Experience  by  association  and  the 
mind-dust  theory,  are  examples  of  what  I  mean. 

"  The  natural  result  of  such  a  world-picture  has  been  the 
efforts  of  rationalism  to  correct  its  incoherencies  by  the  ad- 
dition of  transexperiential  agents  of  unification,  substances, 
intellectual  categories  and  powers,  or  Selves;  whereas,  if 
empiricism  had  only  been  radical  and  taken  everything  that 
comes  without  disfavour,  conjunction  as  well  as  separation, 
each  at  its  face  value,  the  results  would  have  called  for  no 
such  artificial  correction.  Radical  empiricism,  as  I  under- 
stand it,  does  full  justice  to  conjunctive  relations  .  .  ."  (James, 
Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,  pp.  42-44). 

If  then  there  are  for  us  no  objects  transcending  all  possible 
experience,  what  are  we  to  say  of  physical  things  ?  For 
they  are  surely  outside  of  our  own  thoughts  of  them.  So 
simple  a  thing  as  a  pebble  comprises  many  attributes  which 
I  do  not  ever  think  of  or  apprehend.  Its  chemical  properties 
I  may  not  know ;  even  the  greatest  scientist  does  not  know 
all  of  them.  Are  not  these  really  transcendent  of  human 
experience  ?  In  short,  our  perceptions  seem  to  have  a  cer- 
tain objective  reference,  to  point  to  a  reality  transcending 
them.  But  this  reference,  according  to  our  present  type,  is 
sufficiently  described  as  a  "  feeling  of  tendency  "  in  the  pres- 
ent experience,  toward  some  future  possible  experience. 
The  pebble's  externality  to  my  mind  means  that  there  is 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     247 

more  about  the  pebble  than  I  compass  now;  that  if  I  ex- 
amine it  further  I  shall  have  more  perceptions  and  thoughts. 
"  Objective  reference,  I  say  then,  is  an  incident  of  the  fact 
that  so  much  of  our  experience  comes  as  an  insufficient  [sic] 
and  consists  of  process  and  transition.  Our  fields  of  expe- 
rience have  no  more  definite  boundaries  than  have  our  fields 
of  view.  Both  are  fringed  by  a  more  that  continuously  de- 
velops, and  that  continuously  supersedes  them  as  life 
proceeds  "  (Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,  p.  71). 

This  definition  of  the  object  by  "  further  possible  expe- 
rience "  suggests  subjectivism,  but  we  must  remember  that 
James  is  a  Great  Objectivist.  His  essay  "  Does  Conscious- 
ness Exist  ?  "  referred  to  in  Chapter  III,  favours  a  reduction 
of  mind  to  objective,  though  concrete  terms.  Summarizing, 
he  says:  "  Radical  Empiricism  consists  first  of  a  postulate, 
next  of  a  statement  of  fact,  and  finally  of  a  generalized 
conclusion. 

"  The  postulate  is  that  the  only  things  that  shall  be  debat- 
able among  philosophers  shall  be  things  definable  in  terms 
drawn  from  experience.  (Things  of  an  unexperienceable 
nature  may  exist  ad  libitum,  but  they  form  no  part  of  the 
material  for  philosophic  debate.) 

"  The  statement  of  fact  is  that  the  relations  between 
things,  conjunctive  as  well  as  disjunctive,  are  just  as  much 
matters  of  direct  particular  experience,  neither  more  so  nor 
less  so,  than  the  things  themselves. 

"  The  generalized  conclusion  is  that  therefore  the  parts  of 
experience  hold  together  from  next  to  next  by  relations  that 
are  themselves  parts  of  experience.  The  directly  appre- 
hended universe  needs,  in  short,  no  extraneous  transempiri- 
cal  connective  support,  but  possesses  in  its  own  right  a 
concatenated  or  continuous  structure."  (James,  The 
Meaning  of  Truth,  Preface,  pp.  xii-xiii.) 


248  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

But  the  negative  side  is  not  all  of  radical  empiricism.    It 
is  not  content  with  denying  the  universals  ante  rent;  it  pur- 
ports to  do  justice  to  all  that  they  really  mean  to  us.    This  is 
its  positive  side.    As  Great  Objectivism  did  not  mean  to  ex- 
clude mind,  but  to  define  it  in  objective  terms,  and  as  Great 
Subjectivism  intended  to  recognize  the  external  objects,  but 
by  reducing  them  to  a  phase  of  the  Universal  Mind,  so  radi- 
cal  empiricism   would   include   the   alleged   transcendent 
beings,  redefining  them  by  means  of  experienced  relations, 
functions,  tendencies,  etc.    It  does  not  so  much  rule  out  the 
static  as  restate  it  in  dynamic  terms.    "  For  rationalism  " 
wrote  James,  "  concept-stuff  is  primordial  and  perceptual 
things  are  secondary  in  nature.    The  present  book,  which 
treats  concrete  percepts  as  primordial  and  concepts  as  of 
secondary  origin,  may  be  regarded  as  somewhat  eccentric 
in  its  attempt  to  combine  logical  realism  with  an  otherwise 
empiricist  mode  of  thought ' '    (So me  Problems  of  Philosophy, 
p.  106).    Nominalism  the  present  type  would  be,  with  its 
primacy  of  individuals,  did  it  like  Hobbes  and  the  rest  deny 
the  universals;  but  by  virtue  of  its  definition  of  them  as  the 
possibility  of  further  similar  instances  it  should  rather  be 
entitled  Great  Nominalism. 

Such  a  Weltanschauung,  which  is  probably  more  influen- 
tial among  Protestants  today  than  any  type  we  have  yet 
studied,  owes  its  attractiveness  in  the  main  to  congruity 
with  so  much  of  our  modern  attitude  toward  life.  If 
Platonism  rests  largely  upon  emotion,  even  more  obviously 
does  Radical  Empiricism  —  especially  as  presented  by  the 
charmingly  temperamental  James.  And  the  emotions  it 
calls  into  play  are  just  those  dearest  to  the  twentieth-cen- 
tury mind;  for  they  are  democratic  emotions.  James  gives 
us  the  apotheosis  of  the  commonplace,  the  imperfect,  and 
these  form  the  masses,  the  majority,  of  our  experience. 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     249 

Human  beings,  looking  upon  their  actual  environment,  do 
not  find  things  clear-cut,  exact  or  pure.   There  are  no  perfect 
circles,  no  straight  lines,  no  rigid  bodies  in  Nature;  no  man 
is  wholly  selfish,  wholly  sensual,  absolutely  rational  or  gener- 
ous.   Instead  of  being  "  simple,  clean,  and  noble  "  like  the 
Platonic  world,  our  life  is  for  the  most  part  "  tangled, 
muddy,  painful  and  perplexed  "  (Pragmatism,  p.  21).    We 
"  muddle  along  somehow."    Instead  of  being  ordered  from 
top  to  bottom  by  unalterable  law,  we  find  life  full  of  hazard, 
risk,  alternative  possibilities.    We  like  nowadays  to  think 
that  we  make  our  own  future;  and  the  doctrine  pleases  us 
by  its  appeal  to  action  and  free  choice,  favourite  categories 
of  a  vigorous,  bustling  age.     Chance,  which  to  the  well- 
regulated  Platonic  mind  appears  distasteful  or  even  vulgar, 
and  which  seems  so  patent  in  common  experience,  is  allowed 
a  place  —  for  it  makes  our  work  and  play  more  zestful. 
Even  God,  the  supremely  real  one,  is  not  the  immaculate 
ideal  of  perfection:  "  in  this  world  of  sweat  and  dirt,  what- 
ever the  God  of  earth  and  heaven  is,  he  can  surely  be  no 
gentleman "   (Pragmatism,  p.   72).     There   is   no   other- 
worldliness  here,  but  rather  a  glorying  in  the  struggle  of  this 
one.    God  himself,  in  James'  view,  struggles  with  evil,  and 
grows  thereby;  and  this  success  is  helped  or  hindered  by  our 
own  choices.    The  Platonic  idea,  aristocrat  of  metaphysics, 
is  replaced  by  the  shifting  scene  of  ordinary  human  expe- 
rience, where  all  the  elements  of  the  stream  have  equal 
opportunity  to  prove  their  value  and  truth.    The  cold  and 
classic  universe  gives  way  to  the  romance  of  daily  work, 
industry,  the  common  needs  of  life.     Dignity,  austerity, 
asceticism,  those  virtues  of  a  by-gone  age,  are  likely  to  be 
interpreted  as  pomposity  and  self-centredness.    The  leaders 
of  the  movement  are  unpretentious,  simple-minded;   such 
as  Professor  Dewey,  social  democrat  and  organizer,  the 
humane  James,  and  the  fun-poking  Schiller. 


250  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

But  realism  is  devoted  to  science;  and  these  men  are  not 
idealists.  In  contrast,  however,  to  the  Platonist's  devotion 
to  exact  science,  which  works  with  the  artificial  conditions 
of  the  laboratory  and  the  abstractions  of  higher  mathe- 
matics, we  may  expect  the  empiricist  to  select  as  ideal  the 
sciences  which  deal  with  living,  growing  things  and  which 
observe  them  as  they  work  in  their  natural  environment. 
For  living  things  possess  all  the  traits  which  this  type  loves 
to  contemplate;  their  very  essence  is  to  change,  to  struggle, 
to  disappear ;  they  show  none  of  the  fixed  immobility  of  the 
intellectualist's  types.  The  true  method  of  approach  should 
be  the  temporal  one,  i.  e.,  the  evolutionary;  and  the  sciences 
which  are  taken  as  the  fount  and  model  of  truth  will  be  the 
biological  sciences.  This  tendency  to  base  philosophy  upon 
biology  finds  aid  and  comfort,  too,  from  recent  critics  of  the 
inorganic  sciences  such  as  Rey,  E.  Boutroux,  Ravaisson, 
Renouvier,  Poincare,  Enriques,  Pearson,  Ward,  and  many 
others;  as  well  as  from  the  idealistic  interest  in  human 
personality.  But  it  is  time  that  we  examined  the  detail  of 
the  argument  which  has  been  offered  against  the  abstract 
universals. 

Whereas  change,  relations,  and  individual  things  are 
directly  presented  and  therefore  real,  concepts  as  such  are 
never  seen,  touched  or  otherwise  observed.  They  are,  at 
best,  only  limits,  ideals,  which  are  more  or  less  imperfectly 
approximated  in  our  experience.  For  concepts  are  exact; 
and  nothing  we  observe  is  exactly  anything.  Whiteness  is 
never  seen,  for  it  means  just  white,  pure  white  —  and  all  the 
whiteness  we  know  has  admixture  of  something  else,  be  it  a 
little  darkness,  or  other  quality.  A  horse  is  not  just  a  pure 
horse,  but  a  nervous  horse,  a  sorrel  horse,  etc.  Most  evi- 
dently is  this  sort  of  assertion  verified  in  the  physical 
sciences.  There  is  no  mere  water  or  mere  carbon ;  you  can- 


not  get  them  unalloyed,  no  matter  how  careful  you  are; 
there  are  no  perfectly  elastic  bodies;  no  lines  that  are  just 
length  without  thickness,  but  only  long  thin  objects  such  as 
strings,  wires  or  threads;  no  mere  planes,  but  only  fairly 
smooth  tops  of  tables,  etc.,  etc.  Nor  are  pure  cases  ever 
found,  of  one  law  of  science;  the  action  of  one  law  is  always 
interfered  with  by  some  other.  The  pendulum  in  the  labora- 
tory swings  a  little  slower  than  it  should,  owing  to  friction; 
the  ball  falling  in  a  vacuum  is  attracted  by  other  bodies  from 
the  straight  path;  and  so  on.  Universals,  pure  concepts, 
are  then  not  given  in  experience.  Experience  does  not  come 
to  us  in  generalities,  but  is  specific  and  complex.  "  To  at- 
tribute a  superior  degree  of  glory  to  it  (the  concept)  seems 
little  more  than  a  piece  of  perverse  abstraction-worship  " 
says  James.  "  As  well  might  a  pencil  insist  that  the  outline 
is  the  essential  thing  in  all  pictorial  representation,  and  chide 
the  paintbrush  and  the  camera  for  omitting  it,  forgetting 
that  their  pictures  not  only  contain  the  whole  outline,  but  a 
hundred  other  things  in  addition."  (James,  Meaning  of 
Truth,  pp.  204-205.)  The  particulars  contain  "  a  hundred 
other  things  in  addition  "  to  any  of  the  universals  they  re- 
veal. In  so  far  as  the  universals  get  embodied  at  all,  it  is  in 
the  form  of  particulars  teeming  with  qualities.  It  is  the 
thinness,  meagreness,  poverty  of  universals,  that  make 
them  less  real  than  the  particulars.  The  reason  why  no  law 
is  exactly  fulfilled,  no  concept  found  pure,  is  that  they  would 
be  too  colourless  to  be  noticeable.  They  would  not  be  in 
concrete  contexts,  they  would  not  be  available  to  more  than 
one  sense-organ  or  mode  of  apprehension.  Who  could  ever 
identify  a  mere  horse  ?  How  point  him  out  to  others,  how 
recognize  him  but  by  his  colour,  size,  behaviour,  etc.  ?  No, 
the  universal  is  no  more  real  than  the  skeleton  is  alive. 
The  particular,  which  is  never  simple  or  abstract,  is  alone 
"  verifiable." 


252  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

But  poverty  and  meagreness  are  no  good  reason  why  we 
should  call  the  universals  less  real.  Less  interesting,  less 
fruitful,  less  profitable,  yes:  but  when  it  is  a  question  of 
existence,  we  might  as  well  say  a  hillock  is  not  as  real  as  a 
mountain.  It  is  by  mistakes  analogous  to  this  that  social 
injustice  originates.  We  overlook  the  poor  and  uninterest- 
ing people.  We  are  more  considerate  of  a  genius's  feelings 
than  of  a  nonentity's,  we  slight  a  child  for  an  adult.  The 
small  has  its  wants  as  well  as  the  large,  and  there  is  enough 
of  reality  "  to  go  around."  The  quantitative  argument  — 
as  we  might  call  the  above  —  is  not  a  logical  one ;  it  is  a 
statement  of  our  interests  merely.  It  must  be  supplanted 
by  another  if  it  is  to  have  objective  significance.  And  other 
arguments  we  find. 

The  universals  have  certain  metaphysical  defects.  Thus, 
it  is  a  sine  qua  non  of  reality  to  be  individual ;  and  the  uni- 
versals do  not  meet  the  demand.  Perhaps  the  case  has  been 
best  stated  by  Royce.  The  argument  was  used  by  him,  we 
know,  not  to  justify  radical  empiricism,  but  to  support  the 
ultimacy  of  individuals;  but  it  is  of  perfect  application  here. 
By  that  beautiful  inversion  which  is  so  frequently  seen  in 
philosophical  reasoning,  the  same  train  of  thought  which 
led  the  intellectualist  to  condemn  the  individuals  is  here 
employed  by  the  individualist  to  condemn  the  universals. 
As  the  particulars  could  not  measure  up  to  the  standard  of 
the  concept,  so  now  the  latter  is  found  to  fall  short  of  the 
converse  requirement.  The  argument  runs  as  follows. 

Individuality  =  reality;  the  concept  is  not  an  individual, 
therefore,  etc.  Now  it  is  clear  enough,  perhaps,  from  what 
we  have  already  said,  that  individual  and  universal  are  ir- 
reducible one  to  the  other.  The  real  force  of  the  argument 
lies  then  in  the  assumption  that  individuality  is  of  the 
essence  of  reality.  Long  ago  Aristotle  said,  "Primary  sub- 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    253 

stance  to  be  sure  in  everything  is  that  which  does  not  be- 
long to  another  thing."  (Metaphysics,  6.  ch.  13:  Bonn's 
Library  tr.,  p.  199.)  What  are  the  grounds  of  this  unhesi- 
tating acceptance  of  the  individuals  ? 

It  seems  that  Being  is  taken  to  signify  a  certain  complete- 
ness. What  is  real  is  "  all  there."  This  pen  could  not  be, 
unless  it  were  a  finished  article.  "  An  entire  instance  of 
Being  .  .  .  permits  your  ideas  to  seek  no  other  "  said 
Royce.  (World  and  Individual,  vol.  I,  p.  347.)  However 
infinite  in  number  be  the  points  on  the  surface  of  a  five-cent 
piece,  they  must  all  be  present,  none  lacking,  in  the  surface. 
But  the  universal,  by  its  very  definition,  is  never  complete, 
never  "  all  there  "  —  for  there  may  always  be  further  in- 
stances of  it.  It  is  like  infinity  in  this  regard.  Men  have 
difficulty  in  granting  the  actuality  of  the  infinite,  because 
it  is  something  which  cannot  be  compassed.  It  is  forever 
unattained,  unrealized.  Universals,  then,  lack  the  finished 
character  which  is  a  requisite  of  reality;  hence  they  must  be 
unreal. 

Now  of  course  in  a  sense  whatever  is  real  is  individual. 
But  does  it  follow  that  it  cannot  also  be  a  universal  ?  May 
there  not  be  another  aspect  of  every  stick,  stone,  or  person, 
in  which  they  show  an  unfinished  character,  a  suggestion  of 
more  to  come  ?  Time  seems  to  display  this  very  property. 
The  present  moment  is  all  here;  everything  up  to  it  has  been 
completed,  and  yet  that  completeness  is  no  bar  to  a  tend- 
ency toward  further  experience.  Space  also :  a  given  volume, 
say  the  area  included  by  Neptune's  orbit,  is  all  completed 
and  present,  but  it  implies  a  region  outside  and  beyond. 
This  potentiality  of  further  regions  and  future  events  is  a 
very  real  attribute  of  space  and  of  time.  Any  account  of 
them  which  omitted  it  would  be  clearly  inadequate.  And 
if  time  and  space  possess  this  unfinished  quality,  why  not 


254  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

horses,  dogs,  trees,  and  other  individual  things  ?  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  they  all  do  suggest  to  us  that  there  may  be 
further  instances,  more  horses,  more  dogs;  and  that  feeling, 
that  there  may  be  more  like  them,  is  just  the  gist  of  our 
consciousness  of  the  concept.  From  this  point  of  view,  the 
concept  is  not  poorer  than  the  individual  thing,  but  richer; 
for  it  leads  on  to  more  individuals  than  we  have  already 
found.  This  leading-on  is  a  positive  addition  to  our  appre- 
hension of  the  present.  Professor  Royce  somewhere  asked, 
"  What  is  a  mere  possibility  unrealized  ?  "  On  the  practical 
side,  at  all  events,  it  is  a  good  deal,  for  in  daily  life  we  have 
to  take  account  of  possibilities  which  are  not  yet  fact,  and 
which  may  never  become  so.  My  house  may  burn  down,  or 
it  may  not;  but  I  take  out  insurance  against  the  bare  chance 
that  it  will.  We  shall  enlarge  on  the  importance  of  this 
category  of  the  potential  in  Chapter  X ;  but  it  seems  evident 
to  the  most  superficial  reflection  that  a  view  which  would 
denude  reality  of  its  aspect  of  incompleteness  is  a  priori, 
narrow,  and  against  all  empirical  results.  We  conclude  that 
so  far  the  universal  is  not  shown  unworthy  of  being  real. 

The  incompleteness  of  the  universal,  it  must  be  noticed, 
is  simply  its  property  of  being  inexpressible  completely  in 
individual  terms.  Starting  from  individuals,  and  nothing 
else,  we  could  not  define  the  universal.  The  relation  "  ever 
more  and  more  to  come  "  must  be  introduced;  but  the 
"  ever  "  already  contains  implicitly  the  essence  of  the  uni- 
versal. And  no  finite  array  of  individual  cases  can  exhaust 
this  notion  of  "  ever  more  and  more."  We  have  here  then 
two  elements,  such  that  one  can  never  be  reduced  to  a  phase 
of  the  other.  The  alleged  proof  of  the  unreality  of  concepts 
is  only  the  demonstration  that  they  can  never  be  translated 
into  individual  terms;  the  error  lies  in  the  conclusion  that 
since  completed  beings  (individuals)  are  real,  incomplete  ones 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     255 

(universals)  cannot  be  so.  In  elementary  logic  this  is  called 
false  obversion. 

But,  it  will  perhaps  be  said,  the  concept  as  we  have  here 
used  the  term,  is  no  abstract  entity,  but  only  a  property  of 
the  individuals,  viz.,  their  suggestion  of  further  similar 
instances.  The  thing  which  radical  empiricism  objects  to  is 
not  this  functional  relational  thing,  but  the  transcendent 
universal,  supposed  by  Platonism  to  exist  complete,  by  itself, 
apart  from  all  particulars.  Surely  all  the  arguments  above 
adduced  against  the  concept,  will  apply  to  that  sort  of 
abstraction. 

We  must  reply  in  the  negative.  The  abstract  universal  is 
no  more  to  be  condemned  than  the  concrete.  To  be  sure,  it 
is  not  fully  realized  in  the  stream  of  events  that  make  up 
human  history,  or  terrestrial  or  solar  history.  But  did  it 
ever  pretend  to  be  so  realized  ?  Why  should  it  be  ?  It  is 
aloof  from  them,  independent  of  them;  "  a  clear  addition," 
as  James  said,  not  an  explaining  principle.  But  this  is  no 
denial  of  its  reality.  It  is  not  its  reality  that  is  impugned 
by  this  remoteness,  but  its  concreteness,  its  presence  in  the 
earthly  milieu;  and  there  is  no  known  ground  for  arguing 
that  what  is  not  so  present  is  not  real.  All  that  is  concrete  is 
real ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  what  is  not  concrete  is  not 
real.  Here  lurks  the  same  fallacy  as  with  the  individualist. 
To  show  that  abstractions  are  unreal  one  must  appeal  to 
very  different  reasons.  As  far  as  we  can  ascertain,  these  are 
just  two  in  number;  the  "  principle  of  parsimony  "  is  one, 
and  the  Hegelian  doctrine  that  the  abstract  leads  to  dialecti- 
cal contradiction  is  the  other.  Now  the  former,  so  far  from 
tending,  as  is  usually  thought,  to  rule  out  the  abstract  uni- 
versal, is  perhaps  its  strongest  support.  For  we  could  not 
manage  our  daily  life,  our  religion,  our  science,  if  we  were 
not  constantly  setting  up  abstractions,  thinking  of  them  as 


256  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

pure  and  unmixed,  and  guiding  our  behaviour  by  their  light. 
If  I  wish  for  selfish  reasons  to  make  a  friend  of  a  certain  vain 
man,  I  flatter  him  rather  grossly.  For  the  moment  I  ab- 
stract entirely  from  his  being  a  person  of  common  sense,  a 
reputable  artisan,  a  sound  business  man,  etc.  I  treat  him  as 
just  vanity  and  nothing  more.  I  make  progress  in  his  affec- 
tions by  reacting  toward  him  as  if  he  were  the  Platonic  idea, 
Vanity.  In  point  of  fact,  this  abstractness  is  the  funda- 
mental trait  of  human  conduct.  As  psychologists  and  phi- 
losophers do  not  cease  to  emphasize,  we  live  by  selection;  we 
advance  against  the  hostile  forces  of  the  environment  by 
tacking,  by  meeting  one  at  a  time  —  that  is,  in  abstraction 
—  the  problems  of  life.  Consciousness  itself  is  through  and 
through  selective.  We  attend  to  one  part  of  our  surround- 
ings at  once;  experience  itself  comes  to  us  in  abstracto. 
And  what  is  true  of  the  layman's  mind  is  equally  true  of  the 
priest's  or  the  scientist's.  The  preacher  addresses  a  tran- 
scendent God  in  his  prayer;  and  the  worshippers  are  invited 
to  contemplate  moral  virtues  which,  however  good  men  may 
be,  are  practically  never  completely  realized.  Even  the 
practical  ethical-culturist  must  think  of  the  virtues  one  by 
one,  and  realize  them  one  by  one.  And  in  science,  as  is  so 
well  known  today,  abstractions  such  as  inertia,  velocity, 
straight  lines,  perfect  ellipses,  etc.,  are  simply  indispensable. 
It  is  astonishing  that  radical  empiricists  of  the  pragmatic 
cast,  who  define  the  true  as  that  belief  which  enables  us  to 
adapt  ourselves  to  the  environment,  should  not  hold  up  as 
true  all  these  acknowledged  abstractions.  They  are  not 
only  helpful,  they  are  prerequisites  of  success  in  every  walk 
of  life.  Take  an  instance  from  one  of  the  least  intellectual  of 
human  experiences  —  the  mass  meeting,  the  political  rally. 
Does  not  the  orator  who  sways  the  crowd,  do  so  by  the 
reiteration  of  abstract  terms  such  as  "  republicanism,"  "  the 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     257 

democratic  spirit,"  "  social  justice,"  "  Americanism,"  "  the 
British  Empire,"  and  so  on  —  concepts  the  brilliance  of 
whose  emotional  halo  is  directly  proportional  to  the  degree 
in  which  they  fall  short  of  concreteness  ?  No,  the  principle 
of  parsimony  would  rather  incline  us  to  acknowledge  the 
reality  of  abstractions  per  se ;  so  far  from  being  praeter  ne- 
cessitatem  they  are  quite  indispensable  to  human  progress. 
And  it  is  per  se  that  they  are  to  be  invoked;  if  we  could 
not  for  the  moment  abstract  from  all  else  and  envisage  the 
virtue,  the  ideal,  the  quality  we  wish  to  gain  or  to  suppress, 
all  alone,  it  would  lose  its  power.  Humanity  is,  and  must 
always  be,  dominated  by  abstractions;  concrete  success 
comes  through  that  road,  as  a  man  has  to  step  back  in 
order  to  jump  the  ditch.  Let  him  then  not  scorn  the  means 
by  which  he  succeeds. 

For  that  matter,  individual  things  are  just  as  abstract  as 
generalities.  A  person  no  more  exists  alone,  apart  from  his 
environment,  than  does  selfishness  apart  from  selfish  per- 
sons. Yet  we  say  he  is  real  enough;  at  least  radical  empiri- 
cism says  so.  The  only  consistent  denial  of  the  abstract 
universal  would  seem  to  be  the  Hegelian  doctrine  that 
nothing  cut  off  from  its  context  is  real.  This  doctrine  is 
based,  apparently,  on  two  foundations;  the  fact  that  all  our 
experience  forms  a  sort  of  continuum,  every  part  and  aspect 
being  more  or  less  tied  up  with  every  other,  and  the  principle 
that  the  abstract  is,  for  ultimate  analysis,  self-contradictory. 
Now  as  to  the  fact,  we  should  not  think  of  disputing  it.  The 
radical  empiricist  admits  it:  James  and  Ward  and  Dewey 
and  other  empiricist  leaders  insist  upon  it.  But  here  as 
above  we  ask,  is  that  the  whole  truth  about  our  experience  ? 
Is  there  not  another  side,  the  side  which  we  have  just  been 
dwelling  upon,  the  side  of  partiality,  selective  attention, 
limitation  ?  Objects  come  to  us  in  an  environment,  but 


258  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

they  also  go  out  of  that  environment  before  us ;  they  manage 
to  get  off  alone  as  it  were,  to  be  contemplated  in  vacuo  —  a 
process  whose  subjective  description  is  called  our  abstracting. 
Do  you  say  this  is  subjective  only,  while  the  objective  fact  is 
the  continuum  alone  ?  In  answer  we  may  refer  back  to  what 
we  said  about  subjectivism  in  Chapters  III  and  IV.  There  is 
no  particular  reason  why  the  abstract  should  be  considered 
more  subjective  than  the  concrete.  Kant  thought  it  should 
be  so  considered;  but  we  have  examined  his  argument  in 
Chapter  III.  The  abstracting  process  is  unavoidable,  it  is 
useful  for  extending  knowledge,  for  enabling  us  to  cope  with 
life,  it  is  similar  in  all  of  us  and  pretty  much  the  same  con- 
tents are  abstracted  out  by  everyone  —  colour,  tone,  etc. ; 
in  short  it  has  all  the  marks  by  which  we  judge  any  subject- 
matter  to  be  objectively  real.  There  is  indeed  no  good 
ground  why  we  should  select  the  side  of  our  experience  called 
individual  and  ascribe  to  it  a  reality  we  are  unwilling  to  give 
to  the  universal  side.  It  is  an  arbitrary  preference,  a  dog- 
matic exclusion.  It  is  bound  to  lead  to  a  sense  of  injustice 
and  thus  to  generate  a  revolt  in  favour  of  the  concepts  — 
and  so  to  prolong  the  tilt  between  nominalism  and  Platonic 
realism. 

There  remains  the  other  reason  assigned  by  the  Hegelians, 
to  wit,  the  principle  that  all  partial  things  are  self-contradic- 
tory. This  argument  depends  upon  certain  presuppositions 
which  radical  empiricism  has  not  been  willing  to  make,  and 
which  for  that  matter  none  of  the  types  we  have  yet  studied 
would  admit.  In  Chapter  IX  we  shall  examine  those  pre- 
suppositions. They  go  along  with  an  entirely  new  point  of 
view  in  philosophy  and  cannot  be  properly  treated  until 
that  point  of  view  has  been  expounded.  For  the  present, 
then,  we  must  content  ourselves  with  a  promise  to  study  the 
principle  later.  With  the  proviso,  however,  that  we  there 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    259 

find  no  just  cause  for  the  denial  of  abstract  universals,  we 
seem  able  to  conclude  that  they  have  as  good  a  title  to  reality 
as  the  individuals,  the  shifting  temporal  scene,  or  the  rela- 
tions and  functions  that  hold  between  its  parts.  Radical 
empiricism,  at  any  rate,  shows  no  sufficient  reason  for 
cutting  them  out. 

It  seems  worth  while  now  to  state  our  results  in  more  posi- 
tive terms;  for  we  believe  they  supply  a  much  needed  cor- 
rection of  certain  pet  superstitions  in  modern  philosophy. 
If  we  have  argued  rightly,  any  abstraction  which  is  set  up 
with  due  regard  to  the  rules  of  evidence,  ought  to  be  judged 
real.  Of  course,  it  must  be  properly  based :  not  every  gen- 
eral idea  should  have  our  credence,  but  only  those  whose 
contents  are  drawn,  with  valid  inference,  from  sensuous  or 
other  accepted  data.  The  abstract  concept  witch  does  not 
seem  to  have  any  justification,  because  it  is  of  no  help  for 
scientific  description  or  for  conduct.  The  abstract  concept 
gravitation  is  quite  different.  It  is  of  the  greatest  help  in 
scientific  description,  and  it  is  in  practice  a  necessity,  for  we 
realize  by  its  aid  a  property  of  the  things  we  lift  and  let  go, 
which  we  must  always  take  into  account.  It  is  therefore 
quite  correct  to  say  that  there  is  an  actual  entity,  called  the 
force  of  gravitation.  Those  apparently  prudent,  but  really 
prudish,  admonitions  given  by  certain  semi-philosophical 
physicists  against  the  belief  in  real  forces,  are  needless.  It 
would  not  do  the  slightest  harm  to  anybody  to  admit  a  force 
of  gravitation,  a  power  of  the  electric  current,  or  any  other 
"  metaphysical  "  principle  behind  the  scenes.  Of  course  we 
must  not  abuse  these  forces  and  powers.  Let  us  not  think 
that  they  explain  the  particulars,  in  the  sense  of  accounting 
for  their  existence.  They  do  no  such  thing ;  they  afford  only 
a  convenient  description.  But  explanation  is  not  the  only 
ground  for  belief;  description  is  as  genuine  a  need  of  science 


260  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

as  explanation,  and  what  furthers  description  best  in  the 
long  run  should  be  respected  and  accredited.  Nor  should  we 
be  so  narrow-minded  as  to  deny  the  forces  because  their 
names  do  not  of  themselves  stimulate  us  to  analyze  them. 
The  force  of  gravitation  is  doubtless  in  need  of  analysis; 
but  suppose  that  it  were  analyzed  as  successfully  as  chemical 
attraction,  light,  heat,  and  other  powers  of  nature  have  been, 
even  then  the  actuality  of  the  force  would  not  be  dissipated. 
Who  ever  said  that  analysis  takes  away  the  reality  of  what 
is  analyzed  ?  Is  John  Jones  the  less  a  man  for  the  results  of 
biology  ?  Must  we  say  that  water  is  unreal  because  it  is  a 
compound  ?  Do  either  of  these  lose  anything  of  their  unity 
by  being  shown  complex  ?  They  lose  neither  unity  nor 
actuality,  and  the  names  (one  of  which  is  capitalized  in 
English,  both  in  German)  are  no  bar  to  the  analysis.  No 
more  is  the  belief  in  a  force  of  gravitation  an  inducement,  to 
the  sincere  investigator,  to  forego  the  examination  of  the 
nature  of  that  force.  It  is  one  thing  to  deify  forces,  to  use 
their  names  as  an  injunction  against  inspection;  it  is  quite 
different  to  believe  in  them  and  to  proceed  to  elucidate  their 
meaning.  In  fact,  reason  as  he  may  about  the  matter,  man 
will  always  have  to  speak,  and  think,  and  act,  toward  forces 
and  powers  as  if  he  believed  them  real.  To  stigmatize  them 
as  "  hypostasized  abstractions  "  is  another  instance  of  that 
one-sidedness,  intolerance,  and  needless  exclusion  which  so 
frequently  appears  in  history. 

What  we  have  said  of  forces  and  powers  applies  also  to 
institutions.  Political  nominalism,  which  is  the  same  phi- 
losophy as  the  nominalism  so  despised  by  those  who  sneer  at 
the  subtleties  of  the  Middle  Ages,  denies  the  reality  of  the 
state,  the  commonwealth,  the  municipality,  in  and  for  itself. 
It  declares  that  they  are  nothing  over  and  above  the  in- 
dividuals who  compose  them.  But  this  is  not  borne  out  by 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     26 1 

the  behaviour  of  the  public-spirited  citizen.  He  labours  for 
an  abstract  universal:  abstract  in  the  sense  that  it  is  one 
single  object  of  his  devotion  and  thought,  not  then  "  pul- 
verized "  into  its  members.  (However  rare  this  devotion  is 
in  modern  politics,  it  is  certainly  not  entirely  wanting.)  Of 
course  it  must  not  be  conceived  as  hostile  to  the  needs  of 
individual  members :  it  then  assumes  an  exclusiveness  which 
we  have  all  along  condemned.  But  it  is  distinct ;  the  welfare 
of  the  state  does  not  mean  the  immediate  welfare  of  every 
citizen,  and  so  far  the  state  is  a  different  thing  from  the 
mere  group  of  citizens.  We  often  see  public  officials  caught 
up  by  the  spirit  of  the  institution  which  they  serve;  display- 
ing a  zeal,  a  tireless  energy,  which  before  entering  upon 
office  they  had  never  shown.  One  may  observe  the  same  in 
the  young  athletes  who  strive  for  the  glory  of  the  college 
they  represent,  in  the  voter's  otherwise  unintelligible  ad- 
herence to  a  political  party;  yes,  even  in  the  positivistic 
(and  passionately  anti-Platonic)  devotion  of  Comte  and  the 
ethical-culturists  to  "  humanity."  The  United  States  of 
America,  in  the  Civil  War,  declared  itself  a  Platonic  realist 
when  it  put  down  by  force  the  attempt  of  individual  states 
to  deny  the  permanence  of  the  whole  nation.  So  far  from 
these  political  abstractions  being  non-empirical,  a  pragmatic 
consideration  shows  that  their  efficacy  upon  men's  conduct 
is  too  real  for  us  to  refuse  them  all  the  actuality  that  we 
ascribe  to  individuals. 

It  follows  that  not  only  forces,  powers,  and  institutions, 
but  all  scientific  Hiilfsbegriffe,  are  quite  real:  real,  that  is,  for 
aught  that  radical  empiricism  has  to  say.  Chemical  atoms, 
molecules,  ions,  electrons,  the  ether  —  provided  they  are 
truly  serviceable  for  description  or  explanation  —  are  as 
real  as  the  things  which  they  explain.  Indeed,  how  could  a 
compound  be  understood  as  made  of  such  parts,  unless  the 


262  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

parts  were  truly  present  ?  The  explanation  is  cut  from 
under  if  its  terms  are  not  admitted  to  be  actual.  These 
auxiliary  concepts,  in  which  science  abounds,  are  often 
likened  to  the  scaffolding  by  which  we  build  the  edifice  of 
knowledge.  But  the  scaffolding  is  as  real  as  the  building; 
else  it  could  not  be  employed.  The  electrons,  in  fact,  are 
alleged  to  be  visible  —  at  least,  the  explosions  of  them 
against  the  screen  when  they  are  given  off  by  radium  may 
be  detected  through  the  microscope.  But  the  chemical 
atoms  (provided,  of  course,  chemistry  and  physics  con- 
tinue to  find  them  of  use  in  accounting  for  the  observed 
facts  of  multiple  proportion,  etc.)  are  bodies  that  would  be 
seen  if  we  could  have  vision  fine  enough.  So,  too,  the  other 
side  of  the  moon  would  be  seen  if  we  could,  per  impossibile, 
get  off  in  space  beyond  the  moon.  Nobody  thinks  that  the 
present  invisibility  of  that  surface  is  a  bar  to  its  actuality; 
nobody  calls  it  a  mere  conceptual  device  to  round  out  the 
moon.  Should  the  smallness  of  the  atoms  enjoin  them  from 
the  privilege  of  being  ?  The  attempt  of  the  Energetiker 
philosophy  to  disqualify  all  entities  that  are  not  directly 
observed,  is  wholly  misconceived,  and  if  consistently  carried 
out  would  lead  to  a  positivism  narrower  than  Comte  ever 
thought  of.  And  we  may  add  that  the  "  faculties  "  of  the 
older  psychology  must  also  be  admitted  to  good  existential 
standing.  It  is  quite  correct  to  speak  of  a  faculty  of  reason, 
of  will,  of  memory,  and  so  on.  Of  course,  these  faculties  ex- 
plain no  concrete  acts  of  thought,  or  volition,  or  recall ;  but 
their  names  denote  real  entities,  common  to  many  partic- 
ular cases  of  reasoning,  or  willing,  or  remembering.  It  is  no 
more  helpful  to  progress  in  psychology  to  deny  such  ab- 
stractions than  it  is  to  invoke  them  as  explaining  principles. 
It  is  simply  a  confusion  of  thought  to  conclude  that  because 
they  do  not  account  for  the  particular  phenomena  subsumed 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     263 

under  them,  they  have  no  existential  status.  We  admit  that 
they  are  not  fertile  for  a  genetic  account;  we  have,  for  that 
matter,  accused  the  whole  intellectualist  program  of  infer- 
tility. But  that  is  no  denial  of  its  truth.  Denial  of  its  truth 
will  inevitably  lead  to  a  revolt  which  in  turn  denies  the 
truth  of  the  particulars.  For  neither  the  universal  nor  the 
particular  has  been  explained  in  terms  of  the  other.  And 
this  revolt  will  therefore  lead  to  an  opposite  revolt,  and  so  on 
forever. 

These  reflections  on  the  reality  of  certain  abstractions 
may  justify  to  the  intellect  the  attitude  of  the  poet  or  the 
mystic.  When  the  poet  speaks  of  the  spirit  of  the  forest,  the 
mood  of  Nature,  the  lament  of  the  waves,  etc.,  his  fancy  is 
not  misled  to  error.  Such  entities  are  of  value  to  his  appre- 
ciation of  nature ;  they  foster  his  life  and  the  life  of  humanity 
in  general.  Pragmatically  they  should  be  judged  real,  there- 
fore. It  is  not  that  they  explain,  nor  even  that  they  furnish 
a  more  orderly  scheme  of  description  for  the  real  world;  it  is 
rather  that  they  are  ways  of  reacting  to  our  environment, 
which  render  our  life  deeper  and  richer.  When  we  come  to 
see,  as  it  is  hoped  we  shall  shortly  do,  that  pragmatism  is  cor- 
rect in  dubbing  as  true  the  conception  which  best  enables 
us  to  live  in  nature,  we  must  admit  that  the  insight  of  the 
poet,  the  artist,  the  devotee,  may  give  us  a  direct  knowledge 
of  objective  reality.  The  scientific  attitude  should  not  deny 
the  poetic,  condemning  it  as  play  of  fancy;  there  need  be  no 
war  between  the  views  of  either  —  provided,  of  course,  that 
the  artistic  concepts  are  not  taken  to  be  what  they  are  not 
fitted  for,  viz.,  causal  explanations  or  logical  deductions. 
There  may  be  other  organs  of  truth  than  the  intellect,  even 
though  there  can  be  none  which  gives  results  contradicting 
the  fundamental  principles  of  reasoning.  And  this  serves  to 
validate  our  method  of  giving,  in  each  of  the  philosophic 


264  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

types,  the  emotional  and  practical  motives  as  well  as  the 
intellectual  ones.  Poetic  insight,  when  the  artistic  faculty 
pronounces  it  genuinely  inspired,  reveals  objective  truth. 
"  I  do  not  know  "  says  Mr.  Bradley  "  whether  this  in  my 
case  is  a  mark  of  senility,  but  I  find  myself  now  taking  more 
and  more  as  literal  fact  what  I  used  in  my  youth  to  admire 
and  love  as  poetry  "  (Essays,  p.  468,  footnote  i).  And 
radical  empiricism  should  not  hesitate  to  do  the  same. 

If  we  have  reasoned  correctly  up  to  this  point,  radical 
empiricism  is  wrong  in  thinking  that  it  can  refute  extreme 
Platonism.  There  is  in  the  abstract  universals  nothing  self- 
destructive.  But  the  present  type  goes  further.  It  has  a 
positive  aspect,  wherein  it  claims  that  all  the  universals 
mean  to  us  can  be  put  in  terms  of  the  changing  particulars. 
If  this  is  true,  and  if  there  is  nothing  about  the  concept  which 
cannot  be  satisfactorily  expressed  in  these  empirical  terms, 
then  the  principle  of  Occam  would  seem  to  be  in  order, 
and  the  abstractions  must  be  shaved  off.  Let  us  then 
examine  the  way  in  which  empirical  nominalism  defines  the 
universals. 

We  must  confess  that  here  we  are  badly  stumped;  for 
there  seems  to  be  no  extant  passage  in  the  empiricist  writers 
where  the  problem  is  faced  in  detail.  Very  frequently  they 
declare  that  the  thing  can  be  done.  Express  warnings  are 
given  that  they  do  not  intend  to  deny  the  actuality  of  the 
universal.  "  Lest  I  be  charged,"  writes  Professor  Dewey 
"  with  intimating  that  concepts  are  unreal  and  unempirical, 
I  say  forthwith  that  I  believe  meanings  may  be  and  are  im- 
mediately experienced  as  conceptual ' '  (Journal  of  Philosophy, 
vol.  2,  p.  599,  footnote).  But  unfortunately  the  difficulty  is 
to  see  how,  from  observation  of  particular  stones,  or  sticks,  or 
other  objects,  one  gets  the  sense  of  something  general,  of 
which  there  may  be  any  number  of  instances.  Idealists  here 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     265 

appeal  to  mind  as  the  manufacturer  of  the  concept;  but 
they  do  not  attempt  to  build  it  up  by  mere  summation  or 
comparison  of  instances.  And  empiricism,  abjuring  the 
transcendental  maker,  has  not  yet  put  any  agent  in  its  place. 
Must  it  content  itself  then  with  remarking  that  we  simply 
find  the  universal  persisting  through  the  changes  —  that  we 
see  the  common  elements  of  many  cats,  or  dogs,  or  men 
directly  and  so  observe  the  universal  ?  No  doubt  the  remark 
is  a  true  one.  But  it  does  not  account  for  the  feeling  that 
there  may  be  further  cases;  and  this  feeling  touches  the 
centre  of  the  universal.  Of  course  it  will  not  do  to  say  that 
we  get  this  feeling  by  generalizing  from  our  past  experience : 
we  saw  three  dogs  one  day,  and  the  next  day  saw  a  fourth, 
whence  we  conclude  that  today  we  may  see  a  fifth.  The 
very  power  to  generalize  is  what  we  wish  explained.  To 
generalize  is  to  be  aware  of  the  universal.  The  property 
that  there  may  be  more  is  not  itself  an  individual  datum 
among  the  concrete  cats  and  dogs.  It  is  doubtless  somehow 
a  datum,  but  its  meaning  cannot  be  exhausted  by  any  num- 
ber of  instances.  Radical  empiricism  is  forever  right  in 
asserting  that  this  property  is  a  direct  object  of  human 
experience ;  for  we  do  become  aware  of  it,  and  awareness  is 
experience.  But  its  significance  cannot  be  fully  expressed 
by  a  series  of  particular  cases  in  time.  It  is  eternally  for- 
ward-looking, suggestive  of  more  to  come  than  has  yet  come. 
We  repeat  that  this  very  suggestiveness  is  itself  something 
which  we  experience  in  the  temporal  flow  of  our  daily  life. 
But  it  means  always  something  more  than  our  present 
experience  of  it;  it  means  that  our  present  experience  of  it 
may  come  again.  That  meaning  also  is  no  doubt  a  present 
object  of  my  experience;  but  immediately  it  goes  beyond 
the  present,  suggesting  another  appearance  of  this  same 
object  to  me.  There  is  always  something  more  about  the 


266  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

universal,  in  short,  than  the  dynamic  formula  can  grasp. 
Again  and  again  the  "  more  "  may  be  reduced  to  a  present 
experience;  as  often  it  slips  the  leash.  The  issue  is  exactly 
parallel  to  the  other  issues  we  have  examined.  Radical 
empiricism  can  define  the  universal  in  its  own  terms,  as  the 
felt  object  "  further  possible  similars  ";  but  intellectualism 
can  always  come  back  with  the  objection  that  it  is  more  than 
that  particular  felt  object  in  the  particular  context  where  it 
lay  when  it  was  felt.  So  realism  always  reiterated  its  chal- 
lenge to  idealism,  so  idealism  to  realism,  so  radical  empir- 
icism to  Platonism,  and  so,  finally,  Platonism  to  radical 
empiricism.  The  upshot  of  the  matter  is  that  we  have  here 
two  irreducible  things,  viz.,  universal  and  individual  or 
change;  and  no  monistic  scheme  is  applicable.  The  at- 
tempt to  put  all  in  terms  of  one  aspect  must  lead  to  an 
endless  seesaw. 

All  this  battle  of  dynamic  vs.  static,  individual  vs.  uni- 
versal, is  very  wearisome  to  one  who  seeks  information  about 
the  make-up  of  the  world.  What  advantage  lies  in  knowing 
whether  concepts  are  more  or  less  real  than  changing  partic- 
ulars, so  long  as  we  are  not  told  what  concepts  are  the  fun- 
damental ones,  or  what  particular  things  are  the  important 
ones  ?  With  all  its  insistence  upon  the  concrete,  radical 
empiricism  has  provided  little  but  another  series  of  New 
Year's  resolutions.  What  it  needs  is  some  specific  affirma- 
tion about  the  nature  of  the  concrete  particulars.  Are  they 
for  instance,  all  material,  all  doomed  to  vanish  and  leave  not 
a  wrack  behind,  or  do  they  indicate  certain  principles  which 
the  still  Platonic  world  does  not  hint  of  ?  And  it  is  as  if  radi- 
cal empiricism  were  sensible  of  this  defect;  for  it  has,  at 
least  with  the  majority  of  its  adherents,  crystallized  into  a 
more  precise  description  of  the  nature  of  reality.  Reality, 
they  tell  us,  is  not  merely  experiences,  but  in  particular, 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     267 

practical  experiences.  The  fault  of  previous  philosophy  lay 
in  this:  it  treated  of  issues  whose  solution  had  no  conse- 
quences for  human  conduct.  Reality  is  not  an  indifferent, 
inert  thing,  but  is  something  which  affects,  and  is  affected 
by,  the  life  of  man.  When  "  man  "  is  emphasized,  the  doc- 
trine becomes  humanism;  otherwise  it  is,  speaking  generally, 
what  is  called  pragmatism.  It  claims  to  be  a  more  specific 
philosophy  than  any  of  the  above,  in  that  it  abjures  all 
abstract  indifferent  subject-matter  and  considers  that  alone 
to  be  real  which  is  concerned  with  living,  doing,  working, 
and  satisfying  our  vital  needs.  This  view,  the  first  of 
the  two  forms  into  which  the  opposition  to  Platonism 
divides,  constitutes  the  second  realistic  type  under  Great 
Objectivism. 

The  pragmatic  current,  being  radically  empirical,  is  not 
clear-cut  at  the  edges.  It  contains  this  according  to  one 
critic,  that  according  to  another.  Professor  Dewey  speaks 
of  "that  vital  but  still  unformed  movement  variously  termed 
radical  empiricism,  pragmatism,  humanism,  functionalism, 
according  as  one  or  another  aspect  of  it  is  uppermost "  (Jour- 
nal of  Philosophy,  vol.  2,  p.  393).  Professor  James  had  to 
write  an  article  entitled  "  The  Pragmatic  Account  of  Truth 
and  its  Misunderstanders  ";  elsewhere,  too,  he  complained 
grievously  of  misinterpretations  at  the  hands  of  pragma- 
tism's enemies  (cf.  Pragmatism,  passim).  Unjust  interpreta- 
tion is  all  too  frequent  in  philosophy,  we  know;  yet  there 
seems  to  have  been  a  maximum  of  it  in  this  controversy,  if  we 
may  take  the  words  of  the  defendant.  Can  we  hope  to  escape 
the  imputation  of  unfairness  then  ?  And  no  doubt,  also,  the 
thing  is  too  near  us  to  be  judged  equitably.  But  our  desire 
is  at  present  not  so  much  for  accurate  attribution  of  views 
as  for  the  appreciation  of  certain  characteristic  and  major 
tendencies  of  this  broad  stream. 


268  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

The  system  is  here  treated  as  radical  empiricism  qualified 
by  the  selection  of  the  practical  aspect  as  that  in  terms  of 
which  all  things  are  to  be  understood.  The  genus  is  radical 
empiricism,  and  the  specific  difference  is  the  point  of  view 
of  the  needs  of  life.  The  following  will,  we  hope,  bear  out 
our  interpretation. 

(i)  The  doctrine  is  realistic  in  its  metaphysics.  Dewey 
writes  "  Speaking  of  the  matter  only  for  myself,  the  pre- 
suppositions and  tendencies  of  pragmatism  are  distinctly 
realistic  "  (op.  cit.,  above,  p.  234).  James,  repudiating  cer- 
tain theses  laid  at  pragmatism's  door,  insisted  upon  this 
point  in  the  article  just  mentioned,  "  Fourth  misunderstand- 
ing: No  pragmatist  can  be  a  realist  in  his  epistemology.  .  .  . 
It  is  difficult  to  excuse  such  a  parody  of  the  pragmatist 's 
opinion,  ignoring  as  it  does  every  element  but  one  of  his 
universe  of  discourse.  The  terms  of  which  that  universe 
consists  positively  forbid  any  non-realistic  interpretation  of 
the  function  of  knowledge  defined  there.  The  pragmatizing 
epistemologist  posits  there  a  reality  and  a  mind  with  ideas  " 
(Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  190-191).  And  "  To  begin  with, 
when  the  pragmatist  says  '  indispensable  '  it  (the  misunder- 
standing) confounds  this  with  '  sufficient.'  The  pragmatist 
calls  satisfactions  indispensable  for  truth-building,  but  I 
have  everywhere  called  them  insufficient  unless  reality  be 
also  incidentally  led  to.  If  the  reality  assumed  were  can- 
celled from  the  pragmatist's  universe  of  discourse,  he  would 
straightway  give  the  name  of  falsehoods  to  the  beliefs  re- 
maining, in  spite  of  all  their  satisfactoriness.  For  him,  as 
for  his  critics,  there  can  be  no  truth  if  there  is  nothing  to  be 
true  about  "  (op.  cit.,  p.  195).  It  is  in  accord  with  such 
words  that  we  have  placed  pragmatism  among  the  objective 
types.  Indeed,  when  we  remember  the  dynamic  theory  of 
consciousness  which  it  fathers,  we  cannot  but  classify  it 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONI^M    269 

under  Great  Objectivism.  "  To  the  thoroughgoing  empiri- 
cist," writes  Dewey,  "  the  self,  the  ego,  consciousness,  needs, 
and  utility,  are  all  alike  in  terms  of  functions,  contexts,  or 
contents  in  and  of  the  things  experienced  "  (Journal  of  Philos- 
ophy, vol.  2,  p.  656).  Many  critics,  however,  have  selected 
other  and  contradictory  statements,  and  from  their  implica- 
tions have  called  it  a  subjective  type.  Now  perhaps  they  too 
are  correct;  perhaps  pragmatism  contains  opposing  ele- 
ments. Yet  it  seems  that  in  such  a  case  more  weight  should 
be  assigned  to  the  express  avowals  of  the  pragmatists  than 
to  the  subtle  and  perhaps  unmeant  implication  of  their 
phrases.  Should  any  one  quarrel  with  our  interpretation,  it 
is  no  great  matter;  we  are  interested  now  in  certain  ideas 
which  do  not  depend  directly  upon  the  subjective-objective 
issue. 

(2)  Though  realistic  as  regards  objects  before  they 
are  known,  however,  pragmatism  seems  to  be  more  like 
subjective  idealism  as  regards  objects  when  they  become 
known. 

"  The  pragmatist  agrees  with  the  realist:  (i)  that  the 
'  world  '  or  '  experience  '  (the  term  does  not  matter  here) 
does  not  consist  of  '  a  system  of  ideas  ' ;  (2)  that  ideas  do 
not  aim  or  '  desire  '  to  absorb,  or  be  absorbed  by,  the  rest 
of  the  '  world  '  (or  '  experience  ') ;  (3)  that  at  any  given 
time  some  of  the  world  (or  experience)  may  be  '  independ- 
ent '  of  knowledge  in  the  sense  that  it  is  not  then  '  being 
known/  that  is,  it  is  not  in  the  knowledge  mode  or  stage  of 
action.  But  at  the  next  step,  where  the  '  unknown  '  part  of 
the  world  (or  experience)  passes  into  knowledge,  the  prag- 
matist and  realist  part  company.  For  the  realist  this  pas- 
sage occurs  with  no  '  essential '  alteration  in  the  material 
which  enters  into  knowledge;  while  the  pragmatist  believes 
knowing  to  be  a  part  of  the  process  in  which  the  world  of 


2/0  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

'  things  '  or  '  events  '  or  '  experience  '  brings  forth  new 
1  things  '  or  '  events  '  or  '  experiences.' 

"  Between  pragmatism  and  idealism  there  would  be  a  vital 
point  of  agreement  in  the  conception  of  the  '  active,'  '  con- 
stitutive '  character  of  thinking  if  it  did  not  turn  out  that 
for  most  idealists  this  character  does  not  belong  to  '  our  ' 
thinking,  but  only  to  the  absolute  thought."  (A.  W.  Moore, 
Pragmatism  and  its  Critics,  pp.  108-109.)  Our  minds,  then, 
are  conceived  by  the  pragmatist  to  be  essentially  active:  they 
are  not  blank  tablets  which  lie  still  under  the  imprints  of 
reality,  but  they  react  immediately,  even  in  apprehending; 
they  affect  reality.  Knowing  is  a  way  of  acting.  Here  the 
qualification  of  their  empirical  realism  by  the  practical  point 
of  view  appears. 

(3)  It  is  not  a  static,  but  a  dynamic  view,  treating  reality 
as  a  process  yet  unfinished,  growing;  it  is  in  line  with  the 
view  of  Heraclitus.    "  The  alternative  between  pragmatism 
and  rationalism,  in  the  shape  in  which  we  now  have  it  before 
us,  is  no  longer  a  question  in  the  theory  of  knowledge,  it 
concerns  the  structure  of  the  universe  itself. 

"  On  the  pragmatist  side,  we  have  only  one  edition  of  the 
universe,  unfinished,  growing  in  all  sorts  of  places,  especially 
in  the  places  where  thinking  beings  are  at  work."  (James, 
Pragmatism,  pp.  258-259.)  "  Here  (in  pragmatism)  all  is 
process;  that  world  (rationalism's)  is  timeless.  Possibili- 
ties obtain  in  our  world;  in  the  absolute  world,  where  all 
that  is  not  is  from  eternity  impossible,  and  all  that  is  is  neces- 
sary, the  category  of  possibility  has  no  application."  (Prag- 
matism, p.  266.)  In  its  dynamic  or  functional  aspect,  then, 
pragmatism  belongs  under  the  genus  radical  empiricism. 

(4)  It  contains  a  principle  which  may  be  applied  to  the 
solution  of  philosophy's  perennial  issues.     By  employing 
that  solvent,  we  can  distinguish  real  and  important  issues 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     271 

from  verbal  ones.  And  further:  the  solvent  itself  has 
implications  as  to  the  character  of  reality. 

Every  issue  is  a  real  one,  whose  decision  would  have  con- 
crete consequences  for  human  life;  and  that  side  is  correct 
whose  acceptance  by  us  would  in  the  long  run  enable  us 
to  live  our  lives  more  successfully.  Materialism-spirit- 
ualism is  a  real  issue,  because  if  materialism  is  right,  there 
seems  no  hope  of  a  life  after  bodily  death,  and  religion  would 
be  radically  altered.  Subjectivism-objectivism,  by  the 
results  of  Chapters  IV  and  V,  is  no  real  issue,  because  the 
settlement  would  make  no  difference  beyond  itself.  If  all 
the  world  is  proved  subjective,  no  information  is  gained, 
no  specific  addition  to  our  stock  of  scientific  truth,  or  our 
maxims  of  conduct.  And  the  same  is  true  if  realism  tri- 
umphs over  its  foe.  (The  pragmatists  themselves  have 
not  used  this  illustration;  had  they  done  so,  much  of  their 
own  controversial  matter  would  not  have  been  written.) 

This  appears  at  first  to  be  solely  a  method.  But  men  do 
not  cook  up  methods  in  abstracto.  A  method  is  but  a  fruitful 
way  of  approaching  reality,  fruitful  because  reality  has  cer- 
tain traits  which  that  method  is  adapted  to  reveal.  The 
pragmatist  believes  reality  to  be  a  web  of  details  wherein 
each  thread  and  knot  is  tied  up  with  the  others.  Hence  the 
true  description  of  each  will  show  how  its  presence  makes  a 
difference  to  those  others.  A  description  which  lays  bare  no 
such  influence  does  not  touch  the  essence  of  the  object.  As 
the  lady  in  Dombey  and  Son  says  we  are  put  into  the  world 
"  to  make  an  effort  "  so  for  the  pragmatist  things  are  here 
only  "  to  make  a  difference."  Things  are  their  consequences. 
"  To  attain  perfect  clearness  in  our  thoughts  of  an  object, 
then,  we  need  only  consider  what  conceivable  effects  of  a 
practical  kind  the  object  may  involve  —  what  sensations  we 
are  to  expect  from  it,  and  what  reactions  we  must  prepare. 


272  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Our  conception  of  these  effects,  whether  immediate  or  re- 
mote, is  then  for  us  the  whole  of  our  conception  of  the  object, 
so  far  as  that  conception  has  positive  significance  at  all." 
(Pragmatism,  pp.  46-47.)  Its  method  is  "  looking  towards 
last  things,  fruits,  consequences,  facts  "  (ibid.,  p.  55).  The 
resemblance  of  this  to  subjectivism's  major  premise  (above, 
Chapter  III),  viz.,  the  principle  of  internal  relations,  is 
evident:  it  differs  from  the  subjectivist  premise  in  being 
more  specific.  It  is  not  that  a  thing  is  all  its  relations  to 
other  things,  but  only  those  relations  which  display  its 
efficacy,  its  influence  in  working  changes,  determining  posi- 
tive and  specific  characters  of  other  things;  in  particular,  of 
human  experiences.  An  apple  or  pear  is  not,  in  any  meta- 
physically valuable  sense,  that  which  is  related  to  a  stone  by 
bare  otherness,  but  that  which,  eaten  by  me,  produces  cer- 
tain digestive  processes,  change  of  tissue,  in  my  body,  etc. 
The  Absolute  of  the  Hegelians  is  not  for  pragmatism  the 
implied  whole,  real  in  itself,  so  much  as  the  entity  which 
gives  me  the  feeling  of  security  in  the  midst  of  daily  struggle. 
And  so  on.  Things  are  their  effects  upon  our  action  as  well 
as  partly  the  products  of  our  action  and  thought.  Here  is 
perhaps  the  primary  specific  difference  of  pragmatism  from 
radical  empiricism. 

(5)  As  a  doctrine  of  truth  and  error.  It  follows  from  the 
above  that  the  true  idea  is  the  idea  which  enables  us  to 
adjust  ourselves  successfully  to  the  real  environment;  the 
erroneous  one  is  the  one  that  does  not  do  so.  This  doctrine 
is  in  line  with  the  biological  doctrine  of  natural  selection. 
Man's  mind  is  an  object  in  a  temporal  world,  and  its  con- 
tents must  be  treated  accordingly.  They  are  functions  of 
living  organisms  and  subject  to  the  laws  of  those  organisms. 
Ideas,  as  we  saw  earlier  in  this  chapter,  are  tentative  re- 
sponses; they  are  confirmed  or  rejected  by  trial.  It  is  a 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     273 

case  of  hypothesis  and  verification.  The  categories  which 
today  seem  so  a  priori  to  us  —  space,  time,  causality,  num- 
ber, and  so  on,  are  but  happy  ways  of  coordinating  objects, 
which  long  ago  chanced  to  arise  in  some  ancestor's  mind, 
and  by  their  helpfulness  enabled  him  to  survive,  were  in- 
herited through  the  ages,  and  now  seem  "  necessary  and 
universally  valid."  This  view  of  the  origin  of  our  chief 
categories,  stated  in  Pragmatism,  chapter  VI,  was  first 
sketched  in  the  last  chapter  of  James'  Psychology,  vol.  2,  on 
"  Necessary  Truths  —  Effects  of  Experience." 

Points  (4)  and  (5)  are,  we  think,  the  most  significant  part 
of  the  pragmatic  position.  They  announce  its  attitude  as 
the  experimental  one;  the  method  of  trial  and  error.  Not 
blind  acceptance,  or  a  priori  deduction,  but  testing  by 
results,  is  the  criterion  of  truth. 

(6)  As  a  doctrine  of  social  cooperation.  In  reply  to  a 
criticism  by  Royce,  Dewey  has  insisted  on  the  social  char- 
acter of  truth  (Philosophical  Review,  vol.  2 1 ,  pp.  69-8 1 ) .  Not 
what  you  find  it  satisfactory  to  assume,  in  your  reaction  to 
the  environment;  what  you  find  it  satisfactory  to  assume  in 
consistency  and  agreement  with  other  men ;  that  alone  is  the 
truth.  Truth  is  a  social  result.  This  is  the  case  in  the  lab- 
oratory, where  the  various  experimenters  must  confirm  one 
another's  results,  and  in  daily  life,  where  we  must  verify  one 
another's  statements,  and  the  lessons  taught  by  the  expe- 
rience of  our  predecessors.  No  transcendental  "  Absolute  " 
is  needed,  to  give  fixity  to  an  otherwise  fluctuating  mass  of 
opinion.  The  verdict  of  society  corrects  the  errors  of  the 
private  judgment.  Here  pragmatism  draws  near  to  ideal- 
ism's doctrine  of  the  veridical  Great  Self  (as  we  called  it  in 
Chapter  VI) — both  being  democratic  views.  But  of  course 
it  conceives  that  Self  in  terms  of  particular  action  and 
reaction  between  environment  and  man. 


274  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

We  must  be  careful  in  interpreting  the  words  "  practical  " 
and  "  consequences."  Mistakes  have  undoubtedly  been 
made  here  by  critics;  they  have  insisted  upon  taking  them 
in  a  more  narrowly  utilitarian  sense  than  the  leaders  of  the 
movement  would  countenance.  We  read  that  pragmatism 
"agrees  with  nominalism,  for  instance,  in  always  appealing 
to  particulars ;  with  utilitarianism  in  emphasizing  practical 
aspects;  with  positivism  in  its  disdain  for  .  .  .  metaphysi- 
cal abstractions."  (Pragmatism,  pp.  53-54.)  Now  the 
views  referred  to  have,  as  a  matter  of  historical  fact,  been 
one-sided,  condemning  positions  which  pragmatism  would 
not  condemn.  Pragmatism  is  broader  than  they,  as  any 
sympathetic  reader  can  see.  And  a  hostile  reader  will  fix 
upon  these  phrases,  take  them  in  abstracto,  and  as  a  result 
accuse  this  type  of  having  no  care  for  righteousness,  truth, 
or  science.  But  consider  the  following: 

"  And  we  hold  all  this  (pragmatic  view)  without  believing 
that  we  are  in  the  least  invading  the  tradition  of  wissen- 
schaftliche  Freiheit,  or  that  we  are  substituting  '  a  philistine 
opportunism '  for  '  the  scientific  spirit. '  We  insist  that  this 
doctrine  does  not  call  upon  the  scientist  to  turn  out  every 
week  a  new  flying  machine  or  a  new  breakfast  food.  It  has 
nothing  but  approval  for  the  investigator  who  shuts  himself 
up  with  his  'biophors,'  his  'ions'  and  'electrons,'  provided 
only  he  finally  emerge  with  some  connection  established 
between  these  'idols  of  the  den '  and  the  problems  of  life  and 
death,  of  growth  and  decay,  and  of  social  interaction. 

"  Furthermore,  it  asserts  that  if  we  follow  the  scientist 
into  his  laboratory  we  shall  find  that  this  connection  is  not 
something  outside  but  a  part  of  the  method  of  science  itself; 
that  'biophors,'  'ions,'  etc.,  have  no  scientific  meaning  or 
value,  no  scientific  truth,  except  in  their  relation  to  an  actual 
efficient  control  of  these  experiences.  This  doctrine  recog- 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     275 

nizes  that  science  should  indeed  be  free  from  the  pressure  of 
immediate  response  to  current  wants  and  problems,  but  only 
in  the  belief  that  its  response  may  be  larger  and  more  ef- 
fective. It  freely  concedes  the  '  impersonal '  character  of 
the  scientist's  work.  But  again,  it  is  with  the  understanding 
that  this  is  only  an  immediate  impersonalism,  for  the  sake 
of  a  larger  personalism  in  the  end.  Like  the  impersonalism 
of  the  just  judge,  it  takes  the  impersonal  standpoint  in  order 
the  better  to  serve  all  persons."  (Moore,  Pragmatism,  pp. 
10-1 1 .)  With  this  defence  of  the  theoretical  interest  we  may 
associate  Dewey's  description  of  it  as  "  a  practice  that  is 
genuinely  free,  social,  and  intelligent."  (Journal  of  Phi- 
losophy, vol.  9,  p.  648.)  And  finally,  hear  what  James  says: 

"  Seventh  misunderstanding:  Pragmatism  ignores  the  theo- 
retic interest.  .  .  .  When  we  spoke  of  the  meaning  of  ideas 
consisting  in  their  '  working  '  value,  etc.,  our  language 
evidently  was  too  careless,  for  by  '  practical '  we  were  held 
to  mean  opposed  to  theoretical  or  genuinely  cognitive,  and 
the  conclusion  was  punctually  drawn  that  a  truth  in  our 
eyes  could  have  no  relation  to  any  independent  reality,  or 
to  any  truth,  or  to  anything  whatever  but  the  acts  which  we 
might  ground  on  it  or  the  satisfactions  they  might  bring.  .  .  . 
Having  used  the  phrase  '  cash-value  '  of  an  idea,  I  am  im- 
plored by  one  correspondent  to  alter  it,  '  for  every  one 
thinks  you  mean  only  pecuniary  profit  and  loss.'  Having 
said  that  the  true  is  '  the  expedient  in  our  thinking  '  I  am 
rebuked  in  this  wise  by  another  learned  correspondent. 
'  The  word  expedient  has  no  other  meaning  than  that  of 
self-interest.  The  pursuit  of  this  has  ended  by  landing  a 
number  of  officers  of  national  banks  in  penitentiaries.  A 
philosophy  that  leads  to  such  results  must  be  unsound.' 

"  But  the  word  *  practical '  is  so  habitually  loosely  used 
that  more  indulgence  might  have  been  expected.  When  one 


276  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

says  that  a  sick  man  has  now  practically  recovered,  or  that 
an  enterprise  has  practically  failed,  one  usually  means  just 
the  opposite  of  '  practically  '  in  the  literal  sense.  One 
means  that,  although  untrue  in  strict  practice,  what  one 
says  is  true  in  theory,  true  virtually,  certain  to  be  true. 
Again,  by  the  practical  one  often  means  the  distinctively 
concrete,  the  individual,  particular,  and  effective,  as  op- 
posed to  the  abstract,  general,  and  inert.  To  speak  for  my- 
self, whenever  I  have  emphasized  the  practical  nature  of 
truth,  this  is  mainly  what  has  been  in  my  mind.  '  Prag- 
mata  '  are  things  in  their  plurality;  ...  in  that  early 
California  address,  when  I  described  pragmatism  ...  I 
expressly  added  the  qualifying  words:  '  the  point  lying 
rather  in  the  fact  that  the  experience  must  be  particular 
than  in  the  fact  that  it  must  be  active/  —  by  '  active  ' 
meaning  here  '  practical '  in  the  narrow  literal  sense.  But 
particular  consequences  can  perfectly  well  be  of  a  theoretical 
nature.  ...  It  is  therefore  simply  idiotic  to  repeat  that 
pragmatism  takes  no  account  of  purely  theoretical  interests. 
All  it  insists  on  is  that  verity  in  act  means  verifications, 
and  that  these  are  always  particulars."  (Meaning  of  Truth, 
pp.  206-212,  passim.)  And  this  author  gives  in  another 
place  some  account  of  the  origin  of  the  pure  theoretic  in- 
terest. "  It  is  obvious  that  although  interests  strictly  prac- 
tical have  been  the  original  starting  point  of  our  search  for 
true  phenomenal  descriptions,  yet  an  intrinsic  interest  in  the 
bare  describing  function  has  grown  up.  We  wish  accounts 
that  shall  be  true,  whether  they  bring  collateral  profit  or 
not.  The  primitive  function  has  developed  its  demand  for 
more  exercise.  This  theoretic  curiosity  seems  to  be  the 
characteristically  human  differentia,  and  humanism  recog- 
nizes its  enormous  scope  "  (ibid.,  p.  86). 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     277 

We  find  no  other  doctrine  under  pragmatism  which  seems 
to  deserve  mention  here,  unless  it  be  the  position  defended 
by  James  in  the  title-essay  of  The  Will  to  Believe,  and  Other 
Essays.  In  that  paper,  the  author  asserts  our  right,  in  case 
of  equally  probable  alternatives  upon  which  decisive  evi- 
dence is  not  available,  to  choose  the  one  which  best  har- 
monizes with  the  needs  of  human  nature  as  a  whole.  If 
James'  qualifications  are  not  omitted  the  view  is  justifiable 
enough.  It  is  pretty  generally  adopted  in  practice,  quite 
apart  from  any  pragmatic  theories.  It  simply  tells  us  that 
in  case  of  doubt  we  have  a  right  to  adopt  as  a  working  hy- 
pothesis to  which  pro  tern,  we  assent,  the  one  we  like  better. 
Such  choice  is  preferable  to  the  eternal  suspense  of  judg- 
ment which  would  lead  to  inaction;  is  indeed  the  only  means 
of  getting  fresh  evidence.  It  is  simply  and  solely  the 
method  of  trial  and  error.  Yet  this  view  easily  lends  itself 
to  caricature.  By  dropping  out  the  clause  "  equally  prob- 
able alternatives  for  which  decisive  evidence  is  not  avail- 
able "  we  reach  the  interpretation,  that  it  is  right  to  accept 
any  view  which  best  harmonizes  with  our  desires.  Such  a 
rendering  of  pragmatism  has  been  made  by  Mr.  B.  Russell 
among  others ;  but  it  seems  to  be  so  clear  a  case  of  exaggera- 
tion with  a  view  to  condemnation  as  to  merit  no  serious 
consideration.  How  long  shall  it  be  the  custom  of  thinkers 
to  abstract  out  from  its  qualifications  a  given  statement  of 
the  opponent  and  therewith  to  damn  his  view  ? 

It  is  possible,  however,  that  these  critics  are  thinking  of 
Kant's  practical  postulates;  according  to  which  we  have  a 
right  to  posit  the  otherwise  indemonstrable  existence  of  God 
in  order  that  we  may  lead  moral  lives.  So  far  as  we  remem- 
ber, however,  James,  or  any  other  pragmatist,  has  nowhere 
acknowledged  that  Kantian  doctrine;  and  the  opponents  of 
pragmatism  have  not  mentioned  it.  In  any  event  it  forms 


278  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

a  different  type  of  theory  which  we  shall  later  consider  (in 
Chapter  X) :  therefore  we  now  dismiss  it.  We  do  not  then 
ascribe  to  pragmatism  the  view  that  our  wish  or  will  to  have 
reality  this  or  that  makes  it  so,  except  in  case  of  material 
changes  worked  by  our  muscles. 

In  the  above  survey  we  have  found  pragmatism  to  contain 
(i)  a  realistic  element,  (2)  a  dynamic  element,  i.  e.,  ac- 
ceptance of  process  as  relatively  fundamental,  (3)  the 
definition  of  things  by  their  particular  consequences  to 
other  things  and  par  excellence  to  the  satisfaction  of  our 
needs,  (4)  the  definition  of  truth  and  error  as  those  tentative 
reactions  by  organisms  which  will  or  will  not  adjust  them  to 
the  environment,  (5)  insistence  upon  social  cooperation,  in 
the  determination  of  truth  and  error. 

Now  we  have  already  estimated  the  first  under  the  type 
"  Realism."  One  aspect  of  the  second  we  considered  in 
connection  with  the  type  "  Intellectualism,"  where  we  urged 
that  the  transeunt  element  contains  a  surd  which  eludes 
adequate  description  in  terms  of  concepts.  The  counter- 
claim of  the  pragmatist,  that  the  static  universal  has  no 
metaphysical  rights,  we  noticed  under  the  discussion  of  radi- 
cal empiricism.  We  there  saw  that  as  individuals  cannot 
serve  to  define  universals,  so  the  transeunt  cannot  generate 
the  notion  of  the  permanent.  Now  we  have  the  latter  no- 
tion: we  use  it  in  our  sciences  (i.  e.,  in  the  shape  of  the 
"  logical  constants  ")  and  on  pragmatic  grounds  it  should  be 
ascribed  to  reality  as  much  as  any  other  which  leads  to 
fruitful  consequences.  The  particulars  lose  all  significance, 
practical  or  theoretical,  unless  the  fixed  universals  be  also 
accepted.  And  equally  the  changing  loses  all  significance 
unless  certain  permanent  characters  of  the  universe  —  and 
so  far  as  we  can  see,  forever  permanent  —  such  as  certain 
properties  of  space,  of  time,  and  of  number,  are  admitted. 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    279 

If  James  "  as  a  good  pragmatist  "  accepts  the  unalterable 
Absolute  for  the  help  it  gives  to  life,  so  ought  all  pragmatists 
to  accept  as  objectively  true  the  rigid  laws  of  number  and 
quantity  which  enable  us  to  count  vibrations,  predict  veloci- 
ties, estimate  the  strength  of  bridges,  and  otherwise  adapt 
ourselves  to  our  environment.  Change  may  be  ultimately 
real,  but  rigidity  accompanies  it;  and  each  becomes  mean- 
ingless alone.  Pragmatism  is  irrefutable,  but  it  does  not 
refute  its  alleged  adversary,  the  "  static  "  type;  it  rather 
confirms  it. 

The  next  aspect  of  pragmatism,  in  which  it  demies  things 
by  their  relations  and  par  excellence  by  their  consequences  to 
our  living,  depends  on  a  principle  which  we  have  called  the 
principle  of  internal  relations.  This  we  discussed  under  sub- 
jectivism (Chapter  III),  finding  no  reason  to  deny  it.  The 
turn  which  the  pragmatist  gives  it  is  as  just  as  any  other 
turn;  for  the  principle  works  in  all  directions.  A  hat  may 
with  propriety  be  defined  as  that  which  I  put  on  my  head;  a 
tiger  as  a  beast  I  should  run  from;  water  as  that  which  I 
can  with  suitable  apparatus  decompose  into  2H+  O,  or  use 
to  revive  a  wilting  flower,  or  drink.  Yet  there  are  cases 
where  the  object  must  be  defined  as  that  to  which  we  react 
merely  by  attending  or  contemplation.  These  are  limiting 
cases,  where  the  consequences  to  life  are  so  utterly  remote 
that  they  are  not  discernible,  or  —  if  one  wishes  to  go  to  the 
other  extreme  —  they  are  so  very  immediate  that  they  can 
hardly  be  called  consequences.  They  are  by  no  means  rare; 
in  fact,  they  are  found  in  almost  every  moment  of  waking 
life.  They  are  present  as  another  aspect  of  the  matter  than 
the  consequential  or  practical  aspect,  present  along  with  it 
continually.  When  for  instance  I  take  up  my  pen  to  write, 
I  treat  "  pen  "  as  meaning  "  that  with  which  I  write  ";  yet 
also  I  see  and  apprehend  it  as  a  black  object,  and  the  black- 


280  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

ness  is  entirely  irrelevant  to  the  uses  of  my  behaviour.    So 
far  as  we  can  learn,  it  has  not  at  this  moment  any  practical 
bearings.    It  would  have,  did  I  take  particular  interest  in  the 
colour,  or  feel  a  desire  to  change  the  colour;  but  actually, 
while  I  feel  no  noticeable  interest  or  desire,  I  nevertheless  am 
aware  of  the  blackness  as  a  still  objective  fact.    Such  aware- 
ness is  quite  contemplative,  for  however  short  a  time;  and 
it  is  states  like  this  which  constitute  what  is  known  as  the 
theoretic  attitude.    There  is  an  attitude  which  would  know 
for  the  sake  of  the  knowing:  it  is  practical,  of  course,  in  the 
sense  that  it  seeks  to  satisfy  an  instinctive  human  need,  but 
that  need  is  not  only  felt  as  indifferent  to  the  maintenance 
of  life,  sometimes  it  even  works  against  it.    This  self-con- 
tained state  of  beholding,  pragmatism  does  certainly  tend  to 
neglect.     "  Organic  functions  "   writes   Professor  Dewey 
"  deal  with  things  as  things  in  course,  in  operation,  in  a 
state  of  affairs  not  yet  given  or  completed.    What  is  done 
with,  what  is  just '  there,'  is  of  concern  only  in  the  poten- 
tialities which  it  may  indicate.    As  ended,  as  wholly  given,  it 
is  of  no  account."    (Creative  Intelligence,  p.  20.)    (We  have 
italicized  the  words  which  seem  to  us  to  exclude  pure  cogni- 
tion.)   Now  we  assert  that  such  an  independent  need  is  to 
the  other  needs,  the  "  practical  "  ones,  however  broadly 
conceived,  much  as  the  abstract  universal  is  to  the  concrete 
particulars,  or  the  external  world  to  subjectivism;  in  short, 
it  is  a  surd,  a  critical  point  at  which  the  pragmatic  formula 
becomes  a  formality.    That  formula  can  embrace  it,  to  be 
sure;    the  principle  of  pragmatism  is  never  false.    But  it 
/     cannot  in  any  way  help  us  to  understand  this  phenomenon, 
so  curious  from  the  practical  point  of  view.    How  from  the 
fact  that  we  seek  knowledge  in  order  to  get  on  better  with 
our  environment,  could  one  ever  suspect  that  we  should 
come  to  seek  it  pure  ?    Or  how  by  examining  the  objects  of 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     281 

theoretic  curiosity  in  the  light  of  the  fact  that  they  satisfy 
an  instinctive  need,  can  we  ascertain  anything  about  the 
make-up  of  those  objects  which  would  not  come  to  ordinary 
observation  ?  Consider  my  seeing  of  black  as  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  instinct  of  curiosity.  Is  that  a  fertile  way  of 
looking  at  the  matter  ?  Does  it  suggest  in  any  measure  the 
nature  of  what  I  shall  see  ?  In  the  case  of  practical  knowl- 
edge, the  stimulus-response  formula  is  indeed  suggestive: 
for  it  enables  us  to  bring  knowledge,  even  consciousness,  into 
the  category  of  organic  activities,  and  abolishes  the  mys- 
terious dualism  of  intellect  and  will.  But  the  dualism 
breaks  out  when  we  come  to  those  thousand  and  one 
instances  of  negligent  awareness  which  accompany  our 
attempts  to  adjust  ourselves  to  the  environment.  The 
object  black  is  not  significantly  defined  when  it  is  considered 
a  stage  in  an  organic  process. 

Professor  Moore  in  a  passage  already  quoted  has  likened 
the  disinterested  curiosity  of  contemplation  to  the  imper- 
sonality of  the  judge;  both  being  designed  to  secure  greater 
benefit  to  human  life  in  the  end.  No  doubt  both  do  secure 
it;  but  the  theoretic  attitude  is  not  conceived  in  that  spirit. 
It  sometimes  does  not  work  for  practical  benefits  at  all. 
Naturally,  it  does  not  refuse  them;  but  it  is  in  itself  indif- 
ferent to  them;  it  is  self-sufficient,  like  the  universals  upon 
which  it  sometimes  fixes  its  gaze.  Such  self-containedness 
and  independence  of  the  other  needs  of  life  can  hardly  be  ac- 
counted for  by  our  saying  that  its  utility  is  a  very  remote 
one.  As  no  addition  of  distances  can  make  up  infinity,  so  no 
putting  off  of  the  practical  benefits  to  a  remoter  and  remoter 
period  can  reach  the  limit  of  pure  decopia.  The  limit  is  be- 
yond the  series.  It  is,  once  more,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  series,  a  "  foreign  other,"  a  surd  which  must  be  recog- 
nized but  cannot  be  explained  in  terms  of  the  members  of 


282  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

that  series.  It  can  even,  if  you  insist,  be  denned  by  reference 
to  the  series  —  i.  e.,  as  its  limit;  but  such  definition  is  barren, 
since  it  does  not  guarantee  the  actual  existence  of  that  limit. 
Here  then  we  seem  to  find  the  critical  point  of  pragmatism, 
in  the  independent  theoretic  need  and  in  the  character  of  the 
reality  which  satisfies  that  need.  The  pragmatic  rule  can 
neither  account  for  the  presence  of  such  an  instinct,  nor  give 
any  information  as  to  the  specific  content  of  the  real  world 
of  objects  and  events. 

In  our  waking  moments,  disinterested  contemplation  and 
interested  practice  accompany  each  other  at  every  turn.  If 
you  like,  each  implies  the  other.  But  neither  is  more  fun- 
damental than  the  other,  for  neither  can  be  adequately 
reduced  to  an  instance  of  the  other. 

If  pragmatism  were  true  then  by  its  own  criterion  it 
should  be  a  profitable  doctrine;  it  should  aid  us  in  under- 
standing the  nature  of  reality.  We  have  granted  that  it  is 
true,  though  we  have  accused  it  of  throwing  no  light,  at  least 
directly,  upon  the  general  scheme  and  plan  of  the  universe. 
How  can  we  reconcile  these  statements  ?  Thus:  pragma- 
tism is  of  great  intellectual  profit,  but  in  a  negative  sense. 
It  has  dissolved  many  of  those  old  knots  which  philosophers 
have  been  unable  to  untie.  If  we  accept  its  principle  that 
"there  is  no  difference  which  doesn't  make  a  difference," 
the  ancient  quarrels  about  subjectivism,  Platonism,  ideal- 
ism, etc.,  disappear.  For,  as  we  have  tried  to  show,  those 
issues  have  no  bearing  upon  the  details  of  science  or  life; 
they  make  no  difference  to  any  view  but  their  own,  they 
furnish  no  specific  information.  Our  whole  treatment  thus 
far  has  itself  been  pragmatic  (  if  we  understand  the  term 
rightly) ;  and  we  might  have  been  expected  to  concede  the 
truth  of  pragmatism  itself.  Not  that,  so  far  as  we  know,  any 
pragmatist  has  applied  his  method  to  these  time-honoured 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    283 

controversies.  On  the  contrary,  present-day  devotees  of  the 
doctrine  have  confined  themselves  almost  wholly  to  extolling 
their  method ;  they  have  scarcely  employed  it  upon  a  single 
problem  connected  with  reality.  But  we  believe  that  it 
could  easily  be  done,  and  have  endeavoured  to  some  extent 
to  do  it.  And  thereby  we  claim  to  have  shown  that  the  prag- 
matic solvent  justifies  itself  by  dissipating  certain  issues  and 
releasing  a  large  store  of  human  energy,  formerly  penned  up 
in  those  fields,  for  more  profitable  inquiries.  But  it  does  not 
seem  to  show  itself  fertile  to  account  for  the  specific  con- 
tours of  reality,  or  of  the  human  mind  on  its  contemplative 
side. 

The  two  remaining  theses  are  the  definition  of  truth  and 
error  and  the  doctrine  of  social  cooperation.  No  new  critical 
points  can  be  discovered,  it  seems,  from  an  investigation  of 
them.  The  former  has  been  perhaps  sufficiently  discussed 
under  the  dynamic  definition  of  consciousness,  and  the  latter 
in  what  we  said  in  Chapter  VII  about  the  veridical  Great 
Self  of  idealism. 

So  much  for  the  individual  theses  of  pragmatism.  But  if 
we  said  no  more,  we  should  be  unfair  to  it ;  for  beneath  the 
surface  runs  an  undercurrent,  in  which  they  swim,  and 
which  undoubtedly  sets  in  a  forward  direction.  We  have 
not  as  yet  singled  this  out;  for  it  is  pervasive  rather  than 
explicit  in  the  pragmatic  writings.  We  refer  to  the  fact  that 
pragmatism  upholds  a  method  of  investigation  which  is  in- 
valuable to  man,  yes,  indispensable;  viz.,  the  experimental 
or  trial-and-error  method.  The  pragmatist  does  not  believe, 
for  example,  that  we  could  be  satisfied  with  an  a  priori  proof 
of  God,  however  infallible.  God's  existence  could  not  really 
mean  God's  existence,  unless  in  the  details  of  life  we  found 
by  actual  trial,  that  we  could  somehow  draw  upon  Him  with 
profit.  Profit,  of  course,  not  necessarily  material  or  sensual, 


284  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

nevertheless/^//  as  profit ;  whether  as  enlargement  of  mental 
horizon,  or  increase  of  energy  in  social  work,  or  as  immediate 
joy  and  peace.  This  experimental  mode  of  truth  is  con- 
ceived by  pragmatism  to  be  of  universal  application.  In 
the  sphere  of  government,  for  instance:  it  is  of  no  use  to 
deduce  beforehand  the  nature  of  the  ideal  state;  one  must 
test  one  institution  after  another,  learning  by  failures,  find- 
ing at  last  the  kind  best  adapted  to  the  particular  nation. 
Equal  opportunity  for  all  forms,  as  for  all  men,  is  its  social- 
istic watchword.  It  finds  in  the  democratic  common- 
wealths of  the  Anglo-Saxon  peoples  such  a  possibility  for 
experiment;  in  contrast  with  the  rigid  monarchical  system 
of  Germany,  where  social  experiments  are  not  permitted. 
(See  Dewey,  German  Philosophy  and  Politics,  pp.  125-126.) 
Readers  of  Professor  Dewey's  book,  German  Philosophy  and 
Politics,  which  is  nothing  but  pragmatism  applied  to  the 
science  of  government,  will  perhaps  learn  more  of  the  work- 
ing spirit  of  this  type  than  students  who  confine  their  atten- 
tion to  the  philosophical  treatises  from  which  we  have 
quoted.  Of  course  this  method  is  not  new,  as  indeed  the 
pragmatists  recognize.  But  it  needs  to  be  emphasized ;  for 
it  is  indisputably  sound.  Just  as  in  science  an  hypothesis  is 
not  true  unless  it  explains  the  particular  details  of  fact,  so 
in  religion  a  creed  is  not  worthy  of  acceptance  unless  it 
makes  men's  daily  lives  better,  and  in  politics  a  platform  is 
not  justified  unless  it  is  tried  and  found  to  lead  toward 
ultimate  prosperity.  Too  long  have  the  philosophers  over- 
looked this  truth,  with  their  controversies  over  universals, 
idealism,  realism,  determinism,  and  all  the  long  list  of  issues 
whose  decision  admits  of  no  experimental  test.  It  is,  we 
think,  the  one  great  contribution  of  pragmatism,  to  insist 
upon  such  verification;  and  it  would  seem  petty  and  mean 
to  overlook  its  value  and  to  confine  ourselves  only  to  the 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    285 

somewhat  one-sided  metaphysics  which  accompanies  the 
gift.  We  do  not  say,  as  perhaps  some  pragmatists  would, 
that  experiment  can  reveal  nothing  absolute  and  eternal, 
which  would  never  need  retesting;  but  we  do  say  that  veri- 
fication of  a  principle  by  its  concrete  effects  in  the  particulars 
is  a  sine  qua  non  of  any  proper  philosophy.  And  herein 
pragmatism  offers  a  just  criticism  of  many  systems  which 
have  gone  before. 

Meanwhile,  we  must  once  more  regret  that  pragmatists 
have  contented  themselves  with  urging  their  method,  rather 
than  going  on  to  use  it  for  the  solution  of  such  specific  ques- 
tions as  we  have  named  above.  The  formality  and  barren- 
ness which  have  afflicted  the  other  types,  have  not  failed  to 
infect  the  present  occasion  also.  What  social  institutions 
will  experiment  justify  ?  What  metaphysical  truths  will  the 
pragmatic  inquiry  give  us  ?  What  religious  truth  ?  We  are 
not  told.  So  long  as  these  questions  remain  unanswered,  so 
long  will  the  pragmatic  defence  of  the  experimental  method 
be  controverted  by  the  static  types,  and  the  internecine 
strife  of  metaphysics  be  perpetuated.  For,  besides  the 
method  of  concrete  testing,  there  is  another  one,  viz.,  the  / 
thinking  out  of  things  beforehand.  There  are  many  plans 
which  a  little  common  reflection  is  able  to  approve  or  con- 
demn without  the  trouble  of  testing.  In  contrast  with  the 
empirical  method,  is  the  method  of  reason.  The  whole  func- 
tion of  reason  is  to  provide  short-cuts,  to  obviate  the  toil  and 
trouble  of  experience,  to  anticipate  the  results  of  experi- 
ment. Now,  is  it  right  to  discount  this  faculty  wholly  ?  Of 
course  the  pragmatist  is  too  intelligent  to  do  so;  but  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  he  neglects  the  a  priori  side.  If  an 
ontological  proof  of  God  were  some  day  worked  out,  should 
it  not  have  weight  merely  of  itself  ?  We  acknowledge  that 
it  should  also  be  tested,  to  see  if  it  meets  the  demands  of 


286  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

daily  life;  but  if  reason  is  not  allowed  to  perform  its  own 
functions,  more  or  less  in  abstracto,  experiments  cannot  well 
be  conducted.  Doubtless  the  pragmatist  would  admit  this; 
but  he  does  not  perhaps  emphasize  it  enough.  In  particular, 
in  the  fields  of  politics  and  social  reform,  it  would  seem  that 
some  check  is  needed  against  a  too  great  freedom  of  experi- 
ment. Though  we  want  to  learn  by  experience,  some  expe- 
riences cost  too  dear.  And  the  danger  in  pragmatism  is 
that  by  over-emphasizing  an  undoubtedly  sound  method 
we  undervalue,  if  not  entirely  neglect,  an  equally  sound  yet 
contrasting  method.  The  eternal  tendency  toward  needless 
exclusion  is  as  active  here  as  it  is  everywhere  else. 

Perhaps,  however,  the  failure  of  pragmatism  to  provide 
specific  truth  about  the  universe  is  due  to  its  too  great  con- 
cern with  the  human  side,  the  epistemological  problem,  and 
other  gateways  to  knowledge.  How  could  it  furnish  a  map 
of  the  world  when  it  is  occupied  with  the  construction  of 
compasses,  pencils,  and  other  instruments  ?  Should  we  not 
do  better  to  adopt  a  method  which  is  so  simple  as  to  involve 
no  technical  apparatus,  no  laborious  defence  before  it  can 
be  admitted,  much  less  employed  ?  Let  us  then  once  more 
essay  a  reform  of  philosophy,  by  discarding  the  intricacies 
of  exact  logic  and  of  biological  theory,  and  adopting  a 
method  that  is  no  method,  because  it  goes  straight  to  the 
heart  of  reality  itself.  Such  reflections  as  this  lead  to  the 
next  piece  on  our  program,  the  philosophy  of  intuition. 
Feeling,  insight,  the  mystical  rather  than  the  rational  or 
practical  attitudes,  make  up  the  platform  from  which  the 
philosopher  is  now  to  view  the  world.  We  pass  then  to  the 
third  of  the  great  modern  types  of  realism;  the  system  of 
immediacy. 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     287 

INTUITIONISM  AND  MYSTICISM 

The  way  which  philosophy  enters  when  it  adopts  the 
method  of  immediate  insight,  seems  to  be  as  transparent  as 
light  and  as  simple  as  a  straight  line.  But  there  are  no 
straight  lines  in  nature;  and  it  is  as  impossible  for  man  as 
for  nature  to  pursue  a  goal  undeviatingly.  The  mysticism 
of  human  thinkers  has  been  of  many  sorts,  according  to  the 
idiosyncracy  and  the  environment  of  the  thinker.  And  be- 
cause the  method  is  a  very  old  one,  variations  are  the  more 
numerous.  It  has  been  employed  by  the  Vedanta,  by  Bud- 
dhism, by  the  Pythagoreans,  at  times  by  Plato,  fundamen- 
tally by  Plotinus  and  the  Neo-Platonists,  by  the  mediaeval 
mystics,  by  Jakob  Boehme,  Schopenhauer,  Swedenborg, 
Schleiermacher,  and  in  our  own  day  by  Bergson  —  to  men- 
tion only  a  few.  To  cover  the  vast  area  of  these  systems  is, 
of  course,  beyond  our  powers.  Yet  we  find  in  all  alike  a 
condemnation  of  reason  and  apotheosis  of  intuition.  And 
there  is  a  special  reason  why  we  may  neglect  the  great  mass 
of  doctrinal  result  and  confine  our  attention  to  this  common 
method.  We  are  asking  after  the  causes  of  the  never- 
ceasing  disagreement  in  philosophy ;  and  the  controversies 
of  other  philosophers  with  the  mystics  have  not  been  con- 
cerned with  their  results,  but  with  their  method.  A  ration- 
alist, a  pragmatist,  a  materialist,  does  not  discuss  Boehme's 
vision  in  the  Aurora,  or  Swedenborg's  Arcana  Coelestia;  he 
limits  himself  to  refuting  the  claims  of  the  intuitive  method. 
Professional  philosophers  have,  for  the  most  part,  ceased  to 
show  interest  in  the  structure  of  the  universe  itself;  they 
have  seemed  to  believe  that  their  powers  were  circum- 
scribed by  the  task  of  finding  out  how  to  find  out  that  struc- 
ture. And  in  the  case  of  M.  Bergson,  criticism  has  directed 
itself  little  to  his  specific  description  of  the  real  world,  and 


288  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

much  to  his  defence  of  intuition.  The  controversy  over 
method  is  the  real  bone  of  contention.  Let  us,  then,  try  only 
to  understand  and  estimate  the  claims  of  immediate  insight 
as  a  method. 

Describing  it  first  in  general,  we  may  note  that  it  makes  a 
fairly  broad  appeal.  It  is  not  confined,  as  so  many  ra- 
tionalists would  have  us  believe,  to  the  realm  of  feeling  or 
emotion.  Certain  mystics  have  laid  stress  upon  feeling  as 
the  guide  to  the  ultimate  verities;  to  wit,  Plotinus  and 
Schleiermacher.  No  doubt,  if  all  the  mystics  could  vote 
upon  the  matter,  some  emotional  experience  or  other  would 
win  by  a  large  majority.  But  Schopenhauer  interpreted 
insight  as  a  phenomenon  of  the  will,  and  Bergson's  descrip- 
tion, though  giving  it  an  affective  nature,  yet  adds  certain 
qualities  which  are  not  usually  associated  with  feeling.  Hear 
him:  "  by  intuition  I  mean  instinct  that  has  become  dis- 
interested, self-conscious,  capable  of  reflecting  upon  its 
object  and  of  enlarging  it  indefinitely."  (Creative  Evolution, 
Eng.  tr.,  Mitchell,  p.  176.)  He  also  speaks  of  the  continuity 
between  two  kinds  of  intuition  —  sensuous  and  supra- 
intellectual,  adding  "  if  there  are  thus  two  intuitions  of 
different  order  .  .  .  there  is  no  essential  difference  between 
the  intellect  and  this  intuition  itself"  (op.  cit.,  p.  360). 
Again  he  refers  to  intuition  as  "  a  vague  nebulosity,  made  of 
the  very  substance  out  of  which  has  been  formed  the  lumi- 
nous nucleus  that  we  call  the  intellect  "  (p.  xii);  and  once 
more  "  pure  intellect  is  a  contraction,  by  condensation,  of  a 
more  extended  power"  [intuition]  (p.  46);  but  we  must 
remember  that  "  This  nucleus  does  not  differ  radically  from 
the  fluid  surrounding  it  "  (p.  193).  And  Bergson,  like  Kant, 
has  spoken  of  sensuous  intuition.  In  fact,  sensation  pro- 
vides a  direct  insight  into  the  real  world,  and  is  thus  a  true 
form  of  intuition.  But  the  intellect  too  has  its  intuitive 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    289 

powers:  for  instance,  it  sees,  without  the  necessity  of  a 
demonstration,  the  truth  of  certain  axioms.  If  A  implies  B, 
and  B  implies  C,  then  A  implies  C;  if  A  is  the  same  as  5, 
what  is  true  of  A  is  true  of  B;  and  so  on.  Such  principles, 
which  it  is  the  task  of  logic  to  bring  to  light  rather  than  to 
prove,  derive  their  authority  from  the  mere  vision.  Des- 
cartes knew  this;  when  he  said  "  all  that  is  very  clearly  and 
distinctly  apprehended  is  true"  (Medit.  3,  tr.  Veitch,  p. 
1 1 6),  he  stated  the  basis  of  intuitionism.  The  founder  of 
French  philosophy,  indeed,  opened  the  path  which  his 
latest  successor  has  trod.  The  well-known  clarity  of  the 
Gallic,  over  against  the  form-loving  Teutonic  and  the  prag- 
matic Anglo-Saxon  mind,  is  but  the  sign  of  this  same  in- 
tuitive spirit;  a  spirit  we  might  expect  to  find  in  a  people 
with  so  exquisite  an  artistic  sense  as  the  French.  In  fine, 
intuition  is  of  the  widest  possible  application.  When  it 
obtains  a  view  of  the  Whole,  or  of  the  highest  values,  we  call 
it  mysticism;  when  it  is  directed  toward  material  objects, 
sensation;  when  toward  the  analysis  of  some  specific  field, 
insight  or  genius.  It  means  being  immediately  aware,  so 
immediately  that  there  is  no  room  for  error.  It  applies  so 
widely  just  because  it  is  utterly  simple.  It  is  the  natural 
light  that  lights  everything  that  comes  clearly  before  the 
mind.  "  Comes  clearly  "  we  say;  for  what  is  not  clearly 
seen  is  so  far  not  seen,  as  darkness  is  absence  of  light.  In- 
tuitionism's  principle  is  no  thing  more  than  the  maxim  "  see- 
ing is  believing."  And  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  pragmatist, 
the  intellectualist,  the  realist,  the  idealist,  and  every  other 
type  of  thinker  does  homage  in  his  own  way  to  the  dictum. 
Each  has  his  major  premise,  which  he  accepts  because  it 
seems  to  him  so  clear  and  evident.  We  found  the  sub- 
jectivist's  major  premise  to  be  the  principle  of  internal 
relations;  the  Platonist  built  upon  that  of  external  rela- 


290  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

tions;  the  idealist  upon  the  primacy  of  personality;  the 
pragmatist  upon  the  biological  "  situation  "  -  there  is  no 
one  who  does  not  take  his  TTOU  orw  by  intuition.  The  coldest 
rationalist,  and  the  most  fervent  mystic  communing  with 
God,  alike  believe  what  they  see. 

It  is  true  that  these  schools  seem  to  see  very  different 
sorts  of  reality;  yes,  in  the  opinion  of  each,  conflicting  sorts. 
The  one  cannot  admit  the  truth  of  the  other's  vision;  ra- 
tionalist quarrels  with  pragmatist,  realist  with  idealist,  and 
so  forth.  And  since  X's  results  contradict  Y's,  and  Y's 
major  premise  cannot  be  demonstrated,  X  denies  that 
premise  and  ascribes  Y's  view  to  temperament.  He  forgets 
that  his  own  premise  is  equally  unprovable,  and  wonders 
that  Y  accords  the  same  treatment  in  turn  to  him.  What 
they  do  not  understand  is  that  temperament  is  but  a  name 
for  a  natural  ability  to  see  one  major  premise  so  much  more 
clearly  than  the  rest,  as  to  endow  it  with  exclusive  authority. 
Yet,  as  we  have  been  discovering  in  every  controversy,  the 
exclusion  looks  gratuitous;  the  premises  do  not  disprove  one 
another.  Temperament,  if  stripped  of  its  animosities,  is  a 
valid  source  of  knowledge,  and  the  intuitive  method  is 
hereby  justified.  Or  at  any  rate  the  objection  is  removed 
which  says  that  on  the  whole  it  gives  contradictory  results. 

But  we  must  confess  that  few  mystics,  and  least  of  all  the 
famous  intuitionist,  M.  Bergson,  have  conceived  their  one 
instrument  of  knowledge  so  broadly.  As  a  rule  they  have 
drawn  a  line  around  it,  separated  it  off  from  the  methods  of 
reason,  of  empirical  science,  or  of  practical  common  sense, 
to  the  disparagement  of  these.  They  have  urged  a  disuse 
of  reason,  science,  and  practical  motives,  or  a  use  of  them 
only  up  to  a  certain  point.  In  fact,  intuitionism  and  mys- 
ticism are  partisan  views;  and  with  this  statement  there 
appears  before  us  the  duty  of  a  more  detailed  description. 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    291 

To  begin  with,  they  are  realistic:  a  point  we  must  insist 
upon,  since  their  spiritualism  has  led  many  to  call  them 
idealistic.  Intuition  is  directed  upon  reality.  It  is  not  crea- 
tive, as  idealism  and  pragmatism  deem  cognition  creative; 
it  is  recipient.  Bergson  likens  it  to  "  the  artist  .  .  .  placing 
himself  back  within  the  object  by  a  kind  of  sympathy  "  (op. 
cit.,  p.  177).  To  be  sure,  the  mystic,  seeking  to  commune 
with  God,  turns  the  gaze  inward,  away  from  the  material 
things,  but  this  is  no  directing  of  attention  upon  his  own 
processes.  "  To  ascend  to  God  "  says  Hugo  of  Saint  Victor 
"  is  to  enter  into  ourselves,  and  not  only  so,  but  in  our  in- 
most selves  to  transcend  ourselves."  (Quoted  from  Hocking, 
Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  p.  379,  footnote.) 
This  transcending,  now,  is  the  essence  of  the  matter.  No 
doubt,  too,  the  God  of  the  Christian,  or  the  Life  of  the  Berg- 
sonian,  are  identical  with  our  deeper  self,  Atman;  but  this  is 
not,  so  to  speak,  our  peculiar  individuality:  the  One  is 
greater  than  the  particular  subject.  And  the  immediacy  of 
the  vision  of  Deity  does  not  mean  that  He  is  our  own  feeling, 
but  that  He  is  seen  without  intermediaries.  God  is  not  re- 
duced to  me,  but  I  am  raised  up  to  Him.  We  do  not  deny, 
of  course,  that  some  mystics  have  been  sub jectivists ;  but 
many  certainly  have  not,  and  on  the  whole  idealism  is  hostile 
to  the  objective  attitude  of  the  devotee.  While  he  is,  as 
Royce  well  says,  a  consistent  empiricist  —  perhaps  even  the 
only  one  —  he  is  so  in  the  realistic  sense  of  radical  empir- 
icism :  he  believes  that  ultimate  reality  can  be  directly  wit- 
nessed. His  realism  is  not  that  of  our  second  type  —  the 
dualistic  sort:  God  is  no  inference,  beyond  observation, 
transcending  our  experience;  rather  our  consciousness  is 
swallowed  up  in  Him.  In  fact,  this  total  immersion  of  the 
private  self  in  God  or  the  elan  vital  brings  the  type  into  line 
with  Great  Objectivism.  But  it  is  not,  like  the  two  previous 


292  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

forms,  anxious  to  define  consciousness  by  means  of  the  Great 
Object ;  for  its  interest  is  contemplative  and  practical  rather 
than  scientific.  Yet  occasionally  we  hear  the  mystic  speak  of 
consciousness  as  the  split-off  section  of  the  One;  Bergson 
writes  of  the  great  current  of  life  being  shattered  into  bits 
which  are  our  individual  selves.  (Creative  Evolution,  pp.  26, 
269,  et  al.) 

The  intuitional  creed  is  not  materialistic  —  that  is  ob- 
vious. Nor  is  it,  like  the  system  of  Holt,  neutral;  it  is  un- 
equivocally spiritualistic.  Reality  is  an  assemblage  of 
spiritual  beings;  matter  is  to  be  explained  away  —  an  illu- 
sion, a  negation,  a  foil  to  the  spirit,  frozen  mind,  a  secretion 
of  sin  or  the  source  of  it,  and  so  on.  If  these  spiritual  beings 
are  at  bottom  one,  as  the  mystic  in  ecstasy  realizes,  then 
they  are  numerically  and  substantially  one.  The  supreme 
unity  is  no  network  of  logical  implications.  The  whole  atti- 
tude is  diametrically  opposed  to  the  formality  which  has 
so  pervaded  the  types  already  discussed.  It  does  not  seek 
to  prove  that  the  world  is  mental,  or  independent  object, 
or  throughout  determined,  irrespective  of  its  particular 
make-up;  it  would  show  that  reality  offers  the  gifts  of  the 
spirit,  that  it  is  in  a  practical,  concrete  way  spiritual,  con- 
ferring on  us  peace,  joy,  and  strength.  Historically,  the 
mystic's  revelations  abound  in  statements  about  the  con- 
stitution of  the  universe.  God  is  person,  one  and  three,  the 
kingdom  of  Heaven  is  ordered  thus  and  thus,  the  plan  of 
salvation  is  so  and  so,  in  this  manner  did  the  world  originate 
from  God,  by  such  and  such  discipline  may  we  return  to 
God.  So  far  from  being  speechless  or  negative,  as  Royce 
(World  and  Individual,  vol.  I,  chapters  2  and  4,  especially 
pp.  180, 181, 195)  and  others  put  it,  the  system  is  richer  than 
all  the  rest  in  specific  information.  If  it  reduces  all  the  world 
to  the  unity  of  one  spirit,  that  is  not  a  blank  monotony  of 


INTELLECTUALS,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    293 

being,  but  an  identity  running  through,  supported  by  and 
supporting,  all  the  distinct  individuals.  The  Parmenidean 
"  Being  is,  and  not-Being  is  not  "  gives  no  idea  of  the  wealth 
of  content  in  the  mystic  datum.  "  True  Vedanta  does  not 
make  one  sink  to  the  level  of  the  beast  or  the  stone,  but  see 
one  mighty  unity  in  all  nature  and  work  more  efficiently  in 
the  world  for  the  very  light  it  throws  on  the  problems  of 
life."  (Homo  Leone,  The  Vedantic  Absolute,  Mind,  1912, 
p.  63.)  The  oneness  upon  which  mystics  love  to  dwell  is  not 
exclusive  but  inclusive;  not  a  zero-point  but  a  substance 
displaying  the  same  attributes  (love,  productivity,  order, 
etc.)  in  infinitely  diverse  situations.  The  vision  of  it  is 
simple  and  unmediated ;  the  content  which  is  seen  need  not 
be  simple  or  without  form.  (Cf.  on  this  matter  Hocking's 
similar  view;  in  Mind,  1912,  p.  42.)  And  Royce  himself 
says  "  It  has  determined,  directly  or  indirectly,  more  than 
half  of  the  technical  theology  of  the  Church."  (World  and 
Individual,  vol.  I,  p.  85.)  Of  modern  philosophies,  none  is  so 
replete  with  evidence  drawn  from  specific  facts  and  experi- 
mental results  as  that  of  M.  Bergson.  His  message  is  inter- 
esting; being  also  brilliantly  expounded,  it  commands  even  a 
degree  of  publicity.  As  James  used  to  say,  other  types  are 
"thin";  the  intuitionist's  is  "thick."  It  is  beside  the 
point  for  these  others  to  declare  that  the  mystic  deliverances 
are  mostly  false,  for  they  pay  no  serious  attention  to  the 
evidence;  true  to  their  unconcern  with  reality,  they  limit 
themselves  to  the  method.  They  would  not  credit  the 
traveller's  tale  of  the  far  country,  since  they  have  proved 
travelling  impossible.  But  at  any  rate,  mysticism's  tale  is 
positive  and  specific;  and  it  would  seem  a  decided  recom- 
mendation of  its  procedure,  that  it  is  able  so  far  to  excel  the 
meagre  information  afforded  by  the  other  types. 


294  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Objective-minded,  even  near  to  the  confines  of  Great 
Objectivism,  empirical,  spiritualistic,  full  of  concrete  in- 
formation: such  is  the  character  of  mystical  systems.  But 
of  course  there  are  differences,  even  in  method;  and  we  shall 
now  bring  out  what  seems  to  us  the  greatest,  in  fact,  the 
one  important  difference.  The  Bergsonian  system  is  dis- 
tinguished from  the  general  run  of  mysticisms  by  its  pre- 
occupation with  time,  and  by  certain  corollaries  consequent 
thereupon.  Most  of  the  mystics  reveal  the  Eternal;  to  the 
French  philosopher  of  our  fast-moving  age,  the  eternal,  the 
resting  —  all  quietistic  tendencies  indeed  —  are  miscon- 
ceptions. For  this  reason  we  shall  divide  our  discussion, 
first  characterizing  the  Bergsonian  doctrine,  then  passing  to 
the  larger  group. 

For  Professor  Bergson,  time  or  change  is  above  all  things 
intuition-stuff.  It  is  the  very  opposite  of  the  intellectual 
objects,  the  universals,  the  logical  constants,  etc. ;  it  is  non- 
conceptual,  fluid,  dynamic.  As  Heraclitus  conceived  the 
soul  to  be  made  out  of  that  quintessence  of  the  changing 
fire,  so  for  Bergson  life  and  consciousness  are  made  of  time. 
Mental  states  contain  no  repetition;  they  are  ever  new.  He 
described  his  view,  in  fact,  as  "  a  philosophy  which  sees  in 
duration  the  very  stuff  of  reality."  (Creative  Evolution,  tr. 
Mitchell,  p.  272.)  "  Change,"  he  declares,  "  is  far  more 
radical  than  we  are  at  first  inclined  to  suppose  "  (op.  cit., 
p.  i).  "  There  is  no  feeling,  no  idea,  no  volition  which  is  not 
undergoing  change  every  moment."  "  My  mental  state,  as 
it  advances  on  the  road  of  time,  is  continually  swelling  with 
the  duration  which  it  accumulates  ...  as  a  snowball  on  the 
snow  "  (p.  2).  Even  if  five  minutes  from  now  I  have  the 
same  thought  as  at  this  moment,  it  cannot  be  exactly  the 
same,  for  it  has  recurred.  "  The  circumstances  may  still  be 
the  same,  but  they  will  act  no  longer  on  the  same  person  " 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     295 

(p.  5).  And  by  time,  of  course,  we  do  not  mean  that  steady 
uniform  flow  of  which  Newton  spoke,  but  change.  "  Real 
duration  is  that  duration  which  gnaws  on  things,  and  leaves 
on  them  the  mark  of  its  tooth.  If  everything  is  in  time, 
everything  changes  inwardly,  and  the  same  concrete  reality 
never  recurs  "  (p.  46).  Finally,  this  duree  reelle  is  not  object 
of  thought,  but  of  immediate  experience.  "  We  do  not 
think  real  time.  But  we  live  it,  because  it  transcends  intel- 
lect "  (p.  46).  Thus  reality,  which  is  time  par  excellence,  is 
object  of  intuition. 

From  this  dynamic  source  springs  the  next  feature  of 
the  system:  reality  is  unpredictable.  M.  Bergson  declares 
that  "  to  foresee  consists  of  projecting  into  the  future  what 
has  been  perceived  in  the  past,  or  of  imagining  for  a  later 
time  a  new  grouping,  in  a  new  order,  of  elements  already 
perceived.  But  that  which  has  never  been  perceived,  and 
which  is  at  the  same  time  simple,  is  necessarily  unforesee- 
able. Now  such  is  the  case  with  each  of  our  states,  regarded 
as  a  moment  in  a  history  that  is  gradually  unfolding:  it  is 
simple,  and  it  cannot  have  been  already  perceived,  since  it 
concentrates  in  its  indivisibility  all  that  has  been  perceived 
and  what  the  present  is  adding  to  it  besides.  It  is  an  orig- 
inal moment  of  a  no  less  original  history  "  (p.  6).  Thus 
temporal  things  cannot  be  predetermined.  Exact  science, 
which  is  the  work  of  the  reason,  treats  all  things  as  if  they 
were  determined  by  an  inexorable  necessity.  But  exact 
science  deals  with  a  false  abstraction  from  the  real  world. 
It  does  not  employ  the  notion  of  duration,  but  only  of  mo- 
ments that  correspond  —  of  simultaneity  rather  than  length 
of  succession.  The  sun  will  rise  tomorrow  at  the  instant 
when  the  hands  of  the  clock  are  in  a  certain  position:  "... 
the  flow  of  time  might  assume  an  infinite  rapidity,  the  entire 
past,  present,  and  future  of  material  objects  or  of  isolated 


296  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

systems  might  be  spread  out  all  at  once  in  space,  without 
there  being  anything  to  change  either  in  the  formulae  of  the 
scientist  or  even  in  the  language  of  common  sense  "  (p.  9). 
But  this  series  of  coinciding  events  that  science  studies  is  not 
real  time  at  all,  for  time  is  succession  and  duration.  It  is 
given  alone  to  my  inner  experience:  "  it  is  no  longer  some- 
thing thought,  it  is  something  lived.  It  is  no  longer  a  relation, 
it  is  an  absolute  (ibid.}"  And  this  absolute  is  irrational,  for 
"  the  more  we  study  the  nature  of  time,  the  more  we  shall 
comprehend  that  duration  means  invention,  the  creation  of 
forms,  the  continual  elaboration  of  the  absolutely  new  " 

(p.  n). 

Diametrically  opposed  to  science,  to  causal  explanation, 
to  reason  and  understanding,  are  time,  indetermination, 
real  change,  and  intuition.  Our  intuition  feels  time,  feels 
the  unpredictable  already  budding  out  of  the  present  (par- 
ticularly in  our  free  acts) ;  reason  always  tries  to  explain  by 
referring  to  a  cause.  Its  motto  is,  the  present  contains  nothing 
more  than  the  past,  and  what  is  found  in  the  effect  was  already 
in  the  cause  (p.  14).  The  intellect  does  not  admit  real 
novelty;  it  forever  reduces  the  new  to  the  old.  "  Same- 
ness "  would  be  its  characteristic  comment  upon  the  variety 
of  the  world  in  space  and  time.  The  Platonic  method, 
which  places  the  concept  in  and  behind  all  the  particulars, 
is  the  true  intellectual  method  and  the  essence  of  all  ra- 
tionalism; it  is  the  polar  opposite  of  intuitionism,  which 
sees  only  novelty,  growth,  creation. 

As  a  part  of  the  anti-intellectual  program  we  should 
expect  a  condemnation  of  analysis.  A  conscious  state, 
indeed  any  reality  at  all,  is  one  and  indissoluble;  it  is  not 
composed  of  distinct  parts.  "  As  soon  as  we  try  to  give  an 
account  of  a  conscious  state,  to  analyze  it,  this  state,  which 
is  above  all  personal,  will  be  resolved  into  impersonal  ele- 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     297 

ments  external  to  one  another,  each  of  which  calls  up  the 
idea  of  a  genus  and  is  expressed  by  a  word.  But  because  our 
reason,  equipped  with  the  idea  of  space  and  the  power  of 
creating  symbols,  draws  these  multiple  elements  out  of  the 
whole,  it  does  not  follow  that  they  were  contained  in  it.  For 
within  the  whole  .  .  .  they  permeated  and  melted  into  one 
another."  (Les  donnees  immediate*  de  la  conscience,  tr. 
Pogson,  p.  163.) 

Indeterminism  of  course  means  freedom.  "  Freedom  is 
the  relation  of  the  concrete  self  to  the  act  which  it  performs. 
This  relation  is  undefinable,  just  because  we  are  free.  For 
we  can  analyze  a  thing,  but  not  a  process;  we  can  break  up 
extensity,  but  not  duration"  (Creative  Evolution,  p.  209). 
Professor  Bergson  is  careful  to  explain  in  this  same  Chapter 
III  that  freedom  is  not  to  be  taken  as  implying  a  choice  be- 
tween alternatives.  He  said  earlier  "  This  does  not  mean 
that  free  action  is  capricious,  unreasonable  action.  To  be- 
have according  to  caprice  is  to  oscillate  mechanically  " 
(op.  cit.j  p.  47).  Nor  is  the  free  act  still  undetermined,  when 
all  the  events  preceding  it  are  completed :  freedom  consists 
not  in  discontinuity  with  the  past  but  in  qualitative  inde- 
finability.  It,  like  time,  reality,  the  self,  and  the  other 
ultimates,  is  solely  object  of  intuition. 

Such  is  the  positive  side  of  the  doctrine;  there  is  a  nega- 
tive side  also,  designed  to  cut  off  escape  to  any  other  type. 
It  consists  in  the  revival  of  the  old  antinomies  of  reason. 
This  dialectic  has  been  a  favourite  thesis  of  other  mysti- 
cisms also,  and  their  use  of  it  is  a  phenomenon  of  significance. 

In  pointing  to  these  paradoxes,  they  show  an  advance  over 
all  the  previous  types.  Each  of  these  types,  intent  on  its 
own  positive  truth,  failed  to  see  that  itself  was  occupying 
but  one  small  corner  of  the  universe.  It  was  so  possessed 
with  the  zeal  of  its  doctrine  that  it  could  not  see  beyond  its 


298  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

own  critical  point  to  the  equally  just  claims  of  its  opponents. 
It  could  not  realize  that  the  whole  situation  of  philosophy 
was  one  of  never-ending  tilts,  of  mutual  refutations  all 
equally  right  and  equally  wrong,  none  being  based  upon 
specific  information  about  reality  —  in  short,  a  thoroughly 
dialectical  conflict.  The  more  modern  types  have  usually 
heaped  scorn  upon  the  dialectic  of  Kant  and  Hegel;  and  it 
is  not  wholly  without  justice  that  they  themselves,  in  their 
ceaseless  and  barren  strife,  are  but  living  examples  of  it. 
Now  the  intuitionist,  using  as  he  does  a  quite  objective 
method,  attains  an  impersonality,  an  objective-mindedness 
which  tends  to  lift  him  above  the  plane  of  the  warring  fac- 
tions. No  longer  an  advocate  of  a  special,  sectarian  creed, 
he  is  able  to  see  the  spectacle  of  the  dialectic  as  the  par- 
ticipants cannot.  The  partisan  types  of  course  appealed  to 
the  antinomies,  but  for  their  own  purposes;  they  never 
ascribed  them  to  the  intellect  itself,  to  the  nature  of  the 
whole  situation.  But  the  mystic  does  so,  and  thereby  shows 
that  he  is  one  step  above  his  predecessors,  and  on  the  road 
to  an  entirely  different  type  of  philosophy;  a  type  which 
abandons  the  exclusive  spirit  and  takes  for  its  watchword 
"  synthesis."  Yet  after  all  he  is  only  on  the  road,  for  he 
does  not  complete  the  journey  he  has  begun.  As  if  ex- 
hausted by  the  unwonted  effort  to  be  impartial,  he  straight- 
way sinks  back  into  a  new  partisanship.  He  uses  the  dialec- 
tic, not  to  show  that  all  are  equally  correct,  but  to  show  that 
all  are  equally  wrong.  He  chooses  the  negative  interpreta- 
tion, and  thereby,  as  we  shall  see,  in  his  turn  occasions  one 
more  endless  controversy. 

To  the  dialectic  of  mysticism,  then,  we  proceed.  Reason 
has  two  sources  of  its  corruption;  we  may  perhaps  call  them 
the  negative  and  the  positive  sources.  The  former  has  been 
emphasized  by  M.  Bergson,  the  latter  is  common  to  all 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     299 

mystics.  The  first  is  a  sort  of  spectre  or  death's  head,  pres- 
ent at  every  intellectual  feast,  reminding  us  that  we  are 
tottering  on  the  edge  of  an  infinite  abyss:  this  is  the  "  Mys- 
tery of  Being."  Why  is  there  Being  rather  than  nothing 
at  all  ?  Why  any  one  kind  rather  than  another  ?  Why 
any  sort  of  a  world  at  all  ?  It  is  the  child's  question, 
"  who  made  God  ?  "  This  alternative  always  obtrudes 
itself;  this  emptiest  of  all  notions,  the  naught,  flouts  the 
profoundest  reasoning  with  the  taunt  "  why  the  laws  of 
logic  rather  than  nothing  at  all  ?  "  "  From  the  first  awaken- 
ing of  reflection,  it  is  this  that  pushes  to  the  fore,  right  under 
the  eyes  of  consciousness,  the  torturing  problems,  the  ques- 
tions that  we  cannot  gaze  at  without  feeling  giddy  and 
bewildered.  I  have  no  sooner  commenced  to  philosophize 
than  I  ask  myself  why  I  exist;  and  when  I  take  account  of 
the  intimate  connection  in  which  I  stand  to  the  rest  of  the 
universe,  the  difficulty  is  only  pushed  back,  for  I  want  to 
know  why  the  universe  exists;  and  if  I  refer  the  universe  to 
a  principle  immanent  or  transcendent  that  supports  it  or 
creates  it,  my  thought  rests  on  this  principle  only  a  few 
moments,  for  the  same  problem  recurs,  this  time  in  its  full 
breadth  and  generality.  Whence  comes  it,  and  how  can  it 
be  understood,  that  anything  exists  ?  .  .  .  How  —  why 
does  this  principle  exist  rather  than  nothing  ?  "  (Creative 
Evolution,  p.  215.)  This  "  Mystery  of  Being  "  has  been 
acknowledged,  of  course,  by  many  thinkers.  Generally 
they  try  to  put  a  good  face  upon  it,  resignedly  saying  that 
we  can  know  only  the  how,  not  the  why,  of  things,  and 
leaving  perhaps  to  religion  the  insoluble  problem  of  the 
why.  (Cf.  Paulsen,  Introduction  to  Philosophy,  Eng.  tr., 
p.  10.)  (In  the  same  way  science  hands  over  the  problems  it 
cannot  solve  to  philosophy.)  James,  more  candid  than 
others,  marches  the  mystery  out  before  us,  that  we  may 


300  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

know  the  worst  at  once.  (Some  Problems,  ch.  III.)  But  one 
might  as  well  confess  that  intellect  is  fundamentally  bank- 
rupt, argues  the  mystic,  for  it  fails  to  solve  its  own  problem. 
Itself  conjures  up  this  idea  of  the  pure  naught,  and  then 
finds  that  it  cannot  discover  any  ground  why  there  should 
be  anything  else  than  just  this  same  naught.  Is  it  not  a 
pure,  unalloyed  self-contradiction  ?  Does  not  the  reason  by 
its  own  secretion  poison  itself  ?  The  cure  lies  in  abandon- 
ing this  artificial  procedure  of  reason.  Take  experience  as 
intuition  reveals  it,  and  there  are  no  gaps,  zeros,  naughts,  no 
arrests,  no  empty  space,  none  of  these  negations  —  and 
hence  the  idea  of  the  naught  is  a  "  pseudo-idea."  (Creative 
Evolution,  pp.  277  ff.)  "  The  image,  then,  properly  so  called, 
of  a  suppression  of  everything  is  never  formed  by  thought  " 
(p.  279).  So  the  question  "  Why  something  rather  than 
nothing  ?  "  is  a  meaningless  question. 

To  have  spotted  this  ghost  is  the  unique  merit  of  M.  Berg- 
son;  few  philosophers  have  had  the  acumen  to  see  the  im- 
portant role  of  this  least  of  reason's  entities.  And  if  he  has 
laid  him,  he  has  indeed  ridden  philosophy  of  a  terrible 
spectre. 

But  now  come  to  the  second  taint  of  reason.  It  is,  of 
course,  as  old  as  the  Eleatics;  yet  Professor  Bergson  has 
presented  it  in  a  novel  manner.  The  intellect  gives  only 
static  views  of  reality.  Like  the  cinematograph,  it  repre- 
sents the  changing  scenes  of  the  world  by  a  series  of  in- 
stantaneous pictures  (op.  cit.,  pp.  305  ff.).  When,  then,  it 
would  define  motion,  change,  or  continuity  of  any  sort,  it 
must  split  them  into  static  positions  with  ever  more  positions 
between  them.  It  can  never  convey  the  idea  of  transition. 
Hence  arise  the  paradoxes.  "  The  arguments  of  Zeno  of 
Elea,  although  formulated  with  a  very  different  intention, 
have  no  other  meaning. 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     301 

"  Take  the  flying  arrow.  .  .  .  Motionless  in  each  point 
of  its  course,  it  is  motionless  during  all  the  time  that  it 
is  moving. 

"  Yes,  if  we  suppose  that  the  arrow  can  ever  be  in  a  point 
of  its  course.  [Which  is  just  what  scientific  calculation  says  it 
is.]  ...  To  suppose  that  the  moving  body  is  at  a  point  of 
its  course  is  to  cut  the  course  in  two  by  a  snip  of  the  scissors 
at  this  point  ..."  and  so  on  (pp.  308-309). 

The  contradiction  might  be  applied  in  other  directions. 
The  single  positions,  being  static,  can  never  convey  the  idea 
of  motion;  in  order  to  do  this  we  must  show  how  they  are 
connected,  how  the  passage  comes  about  from  one  to  an- 
other. This  leads  to  the  putting  of  positions  in  between  a 
given  two,  and  when  those  positions  also  are  found  to  be 
distinct,  to  putting  more  still  between  these  last,  and  so  on 
forever.  The  transition  thus  appears  as  a  completion  of  an 
infinite  series  of  steps  —  but  as  infinite  means  endless,  there 
can  be  no  such  completion.  The  source  of  the  trouble  is, 
of  course,  that  we  are  trying  to  put  the  fluent  into  rigid 
terms,  while  retaining  the  fluidity.  But  it  is  the  very  nature 
of  intellect,  with  its  fixed  concepts,  to  do  this  —  hence  the 
reductio  ad  absurdum.  The  solution,  to  be  sure,  lies  in  the 
dynamic  view,  which  denies  that  the  static  really  exists. 
"  All  is  obscure,  all  is  contradictory  when  we  try,  with  states, 
to  build  up  a  transition  "  (p.  313). 

Professor  Bergson  applies  the  dialectic  to  the  cases  of 
qualitative  change  and  growth;  he  might  apply  it  univer- 
sally. It  is  not  merely  in  the  description  of  the  dynamic 
that  thought  has  been  accused  of  inconsistency.  The  dialec- 
tic of  the  absolute  idealists  has  found  all  the  categories  of 
science  and  of  practice  to  be  infected.  While  we  shall  take 
these  up  more  fully  later  (Chapter  XII)  we  may  here  mention 
the  one  antinomy  in  addition  to  the  well-known  Kantian 


302  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

list,  which  would  seem  by  itself  enough  to  condemn  all  intel- 
lectual truth.  We  refer  to  the  antinomy  of  the  judgment. 
"  The  very  act  of  attribution,"  said  Plotinus,  "  involves  a 
distinction  between  subject  and  predicate,  which  is  impos- 
sible in  the  case  of  what  is  absolutely  simple  "  (Enneads, 
VI,  IX,  3)  —  and  we  might  substitute  for  the  "  absolutely 
simple  "  the  individual  of  any  sort;  since  oneness  is  equally 
oneness,  whether  of  the  simple  or  the  complex.  Formal  as 
you  please  is  this  mode  of  argument;  but  it  is  only  the 
rational  method  carried  out  to  the  bitter  end.  To  renounce 
it  is  to  play  into  the  hands  of  the  mystic.  For  while  the 
analyzing  intellect  never  reaches  a  point  at  which  the  diver- 
sity of  subject  and  predicate  does  not  conflict  with  their 
identity,  our  immediate  intuition  shows  us  that  they  do  not 
conflict.  Thus  by  the  dialectic  the  intuitionist  triumphs. 

Mysticism,  or  the  religious  side  of  intuitionism,  has  also  a 
plea  of  its  own;  and  here  we  pass  from  the  Bergsonian  to  the 
wider  form  of  our  present  type.  Even  if  none  of  the  above 
dialectic  be  accepted,  the  mystic  will  claim  that  when  we 
come  to  the  ultimate  reality,  to  God,  thought  is  radically 
incapable.  "  Who  by  searching  can  find  out  God  ?  "  And 
what  description  is,  not  so  much  adequate,  as  even  indica- 
tive of  what  the  notion  of  God  means  at  all  ?  If  we  define 
Him  as  person,  then  we  leave  out  the  infinity,  omnipotence, 
etc.,  which  no  person  that  we  know  possesses.  If  we  define 
Him  as  infinite,  then  infinity  is  a  negative  idea  —  the  end- 
less, the  unbounded,  etc.  Or  if  you  try  to  make  it  a  positive 
idea,  to  wit,  the  self-containing,  that  of  which  the  part  cor- 
responds to  the  whole,  as  in  infinite  number  —  then  the 
unity  of  God  seems  to  be  lost  and  He  becomes  a  collection. 
Did  not  Plotinus  say  of  the  One  that  it  is  not  quantitative, 
or  numerical,  or  indeed  the  possessor  of  any  predicates  or 
properties  or  qualities;  for  all  these  imply,  to  the  human 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     303 

reason,  something  other  than  the  One  itself,  which  is  exter- 
nally joined  to  it  ?  There  can  however  be  nothing  besides 
the  One.  So,  too,  the  One  is  not  efficient  cause,  which  would 
have  to  be  other  than  its  effect;  nor  is  it  thinker  as  over 
against  its  thought-object;  nor  will,  which  involves  the  dis- 
tinction of  intention  and  performance.  All  these  categories 
drawn  from  our  finite  experience  —  and  what  other  cate- 
gories have  we  ?  —  imply  too  much  limitation ;  they  are  too 
narrow,  they  cut  off  the  One  from  something  outside  it  — 
but  there  is  nothing  outside  it.  "  The  One,  whose  nature  is 
to  generate  all  things,  cannot  be  any  of  those  things  itself. 
Therefore  it  is  neither  substance,  nor  quality,  nor  reason, 
nor  soul;  neither  moving  nor  at  rest,  not  in  place,  not  in 
time,  but  unique  of  its  kind,  or  rather  kindless,  being  before 
all  kind,  before  motion  and  before  rest,"  .  .  .  (Enneads, 
VII,  IX,  3:  quoted  from  the  translation  in  Benn,  Greek 
Philosophers,  II,  p.  311). 

Such  is  the  second  form  of  the  dialectic  of  the  intuitionist 
and  the  mystic:  reason  renders  what  we  immediately  see 
into  terms  which  either  contradict  the  vision  itself,  or  con- 
tradict those  very  terms.  And  this  is  particularly  shown 
forth  in  the  case  of  time,  of  all  intellectual  description,  and 
of  God,  the  ultimately  real.  When  we  couple  the  spectre  of 
the  naught  which  vitiates  all  explanation,  has  reason  any- 
thing left,  except  the  uses  of  the  finite,  practical  life  ? 
Nothing,  says  the  mystic. 

What  then  are  we  to  say  of  the  truth  of  this  extraordinary 
view  ?  We  shall  try  to  show,  on  the  positive  side,  that  the 
method  of  intuition  is  justified;  that  it  gives  unquestionable 
truth  when  it  feels  the  temporal  flow,  the  free  and  novel 
creations  of  psychical  life,  the  supreme  unity  of  God.  Into 
the  specific  detail  of  its  picture  of  the  great  universe  we  can- 
not enter;  for  the  correctness  of  such  detail  must  be  judged 


304  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

by  evidence  which  philosophers  have  not  thought  it  worth 
while  to  consider.  We  are  now  concerned  only  with  the 
issues  which  have  been  fought  out  by  the  historical  systems. 
As  to  the  negations  which  the  mystics  are  alleged  to  have 
insisted  upon,  to  wit,  the  unreality  of  the  permanent,  the 
exact,  the  repeated  event,  and  the  vanity  of  intellectual 
explanation  and  description,  we  shall  endeavour  to  prove 
that  mysticism,  like  the  other  types,  has  its  arbitrary  ex- 
clusions and  its  critical  point,  which  renders  its  method  true 
but  insufficient  to  meet  the  just  demands  of  the  inquiring 
mind;  that,  consequently,  the  controversy  between  it  and 
rationalism  is  another  of  those  interminable  but  needless 
tilts  which  have  hitherto  confronted  us  in  all  the  types  of 
human  thought. 

As  to  the  positive  value  of  the  method,  there  lies  an  oppor- 
tunity for  a  gifted  writer:  an  opportunity  which  three  of  our 
philosophers  have  seized.  Royce,  James,  and  Hocking  have 
treated  the  subject,  as  no  American  could  be  expected  to 
do,  with  convincing  eloquence;  and  after  their  words,  any 
praises  of  intuition  on  our  part  would  be  a  sad  anticlimax. 
Our  task  is  to  be  the  less  stirring,  but  perhaps  indispensable 
one,  of  showing  up  its  logical  soundness. 

Time  penetrates  our  affairs,  yes:  but  this  penetration  has 
two  aspects.  It  is  now  an  acid,  now  the  germ-plasm  of  new 
life.  It  eats  into  —  Bergson  says  "  gnaws  "  or  "  bites  " 
and  destroys  the  old;  but  also  it  provides  the  novel,  it 
ensures  advance.  According  as  we  look  at  one  side  or  the 
other,  are  we  likely  to  rebel  at,  or  to  approve,  the  doctrine  of 
time  as  ultimate  reality.  But  these  are  emotional  reactions: 
impartial  scrutiny  shows  the  almost  if  not  quite  universal 
influence  of  this  destroyer  and  creator.  So  far  we  can  easily 
go  with  the  author  of  Creative  Evolution.  His  view,  how- 
ever, demands  a  more  extreme  admission.  Everything  real 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     305 

without  exception  is  temporal,  changing.    Does  this  not  go 
too  far  ? 

He  said  that  even  if  the  same  circumstances  were  re- 
peated, they  would  act  no  longer  on  the  same  person;  my 
thought  of  blue  colour  is  not  the  same  as  it  just  now  was. 
At  most  it  is  very  like.  Now  this  universal  negative  is  not 
an  empirical  position;  it  is  not  based,  as  the  thesis  of  spirit's 
descent  into  matter,  the  three  orders  of  life,  etc.,  are  based, 
upon  concrete  evidence.  It  is  founded  upon  an  a  priori 
axiom.  It  would  not  be  possible  to  prove  by  observation 
that  all  our  mental  states,  when  they  recur,  recur  modified. 
So  far  as  inspection  goes,  I  may  not  detect  the  least  shade  of 
difference  —  often  I  do  not  —  between  my  present  image  of 
the  letter  A  and  the  image  of  it  which  I  just  now  entertained. 
An  absolute  dictum,  like  that  upon  which  M.  Bergson  bases 
his  philosophy  of  time,  could  not  be  empirically  established; 
the  exhaustive  induction  which  is  requisite  could  not  be 
carried  through.  The  most  that  one  would  be  able  to  say, 
would  be,  that  a  majority  of  our  thoughts  and  feelings  are 
modified  as  they  reappear;  that  there  is  not  much  monotony 
in  our  mental  life;  that  blank  sameness  in  the  field  of  atten- 
tion soon  leads  to  sleep.  But  we  must  not  let  the  majority 
rule,  in  philosophy  as  in  politics;  for  in  politics  we  compro- 
mise in  order  to  get  something  done,  but  in  philosophy  we 
seek  the  truth.  And  the  time-philosophy  could  not  utter  its 
universal  negation  of  sameness,  did  it  not  employ  a  certain 
axiom;  which  is,  that  all  later  states  must  be  modified, 
whether  we  detect  it  or  not,  by  the  changes  that  have  oc- 
curred elsewhere,  i.  e.,  the  changes  in  the  context  or  environ- 
ment. This  is  none  other  than  the  principle  of  internal 
relations.  We  have  already  discussed  it ;  our  result  was  that 
it  is  sound,  but  does  not  preclude  the  correlative  principle  of 
externality.  (Cf.  the  treatment  of  Platonism  in  this  Chap- 


306  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

ter.)  My  present  image  of  the  letter  A  may  be  the  same 
through  and  through  with  my  past  image,  while  the  novel 
circumstances  add  overlying  differences  without  number.  I 
may  think  of  A  as  blue,  of  exactly  the  same  shade  as  in  the 
former  case,  and  of  exactly  the  same  shape;  but  it  may  be 
larger,  or  in  a  different  word,  or  what  not.  How  does  that 
alter  the  shape  or  shade  ?  To  be  sure,  M.  Bergson  says  that 
since  the  present  mental  state  is  one  and  indivisible,  any  dif- 
ference in  the  parts  of  it  makes  it  wholly  a  new  stale.  But 
this  "  one  and  indivisible  "  is  only  the  principle  of  internal 
relations  once  more.  His  reiterated  declaration  that  my 
state  cannot  be  divided  into  parts  is  again  the  same  a  priori 
principle.  For  why  should  it  not  be  divided  in  thought 
without  falsification  ?  Only  because  then  the  influence  of 
each  part  on  the  others  would  be  neglected  —  an  influence 
which  is  attested  by  the  internality  of  relations  alone. 
Everything  in  mental  life  modifies  everything  else,  inter- 
penetrates it,  forms  with  it  an  "  indissoluble  unity  " :  this 
is  his  fundamental  assumption.  We  do  not  need  to  deny  the 
presupposition.  What  we  do  deny  is,  that  this  modification 
of  the  present  image  A  by  its  new  context,  does  anything 
more  than  make  the  whole  present  state  different  on  the 
whole.  There  is  no  possible  way  of  ruling  out  the  description 
of  the  matter  in  terms  of  its  parts;  equally,  there  is  no  pos- 
sible way  of  ruling  out  the  description  of  it  as  a  whole. 
There  is,  in  short,  no  genuine  issue  here.  The  extreme 
formula  of  Professor  Bergson  is,  in  so  far  as  it  is  true,  a 
formality.  It  does  not  rule  out  exact  repetition:  it  only 
insists  on  interpreting  recurrence  as  not  mere  recurrence  of 
parts  but  as  recurrence  in  a  changing  whole.  It  does  not  tell 
us  anything  concrete]  it  does  not  tell  us  that  we  cannot  get 
the  same  shade,  or  the  same  shape,  or  the  same  anything, 
before  the  mind  twice.  There  is  as  much  repetition  in  life 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     307 

as  there  is,  and  as  much  novelty,  and  no  a  priori  principle 
can  inform  us  beforehand  how  much  there  is  going  to  be. 

Is  it  necessary  to  add  that  the  change-philosophy  has  had 
all  along  to  appeal  to  the  very  things  it  has  contemned  ? 
What  meaning  is  there  in  change,  unless  in  something  which 
suffers  the  change  ?  Is  there  not  always  in  our  mind  some 
standard  by  comparison  with  which  we  estimate  change  ? 
Does  not  Professor  Bergson  himself  use  more  or  less  fixed 
concepts  and  meanings  in  setting  forth  to  us  his  arguments  ? 
He  does  so,  of  course.  The  point  is  a  very  old  one,  but  it 
seems  to  be  still  true.  One  cannot  by  reason  invalidate 
reason.  Professor  Bergson  himself  has  made  much  of 
memory,  as  a  criterion  of  consciousness,  in  the  Matiere  et 
memoir  e;  and  memory  is  a  meaningless  word  if  it  does  not 
imply  some  sort  of  repetition  —  whether  it  is  we  who  go 
back  to  the  past  or  the  past  that  revives  in  us.  In  general, 
it  is  impossible  to  reduce  all  the  static  to  the  dynamic,  for 
the  dynamic  alone  could  not  even  account  for  the  illusion 
of  the  static. 

In  conceding  the  truth  of  the  time-doctrine,  then,  we  have 
had  to  concede  also  its  one-sidedness.  It  cannot  be  refuted 
unless  it  denies  that  the  same  parts  recur,  in  themselves  indis- 
tinguishable from  their  earlier  form.  In  fact,  we  have  in 
essence  discussed  this  issue  in  our  treatment  of  the  concept- 
philosophy  (first  part  of  this  Chapter).  The  static  universal 
was  there  seen  to  be,  for  the  dynamic  view,  a  critical  point; 
which  is  perhaps  the  reason  why  the  radical  dynamist  wishes 
to  extirpate  it  from  reality.  There  is  a  perfect  balance 
between  the  Platonism  which  denies  the  changing  and  the 
dynamism  which  denies  the  permanent;  neither  has  the 
slightest  advantage  over  the  other. 

It  is  perhaps  something  of  an  accident  that  the  latest 
intuitive  philosophy  should  have  selected  tune  as  its  fa- 


308  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

vourite  category.  More  sympathetic  to  the  usual  habit  of 
mysticism  is  the  doctrine  of  indetermination  or  freedom. 
Yet  the  kind  of  freedom  which  the  intuitionist  champions 
is  one  that  the  determinist  need  not  fear  to  admit,  for  it  does 
not  break  any  of  the  accepted  laws  of  science,  annul  the 
"  Conservation  of  Energy  "  or  the  like.  The  raindrop's  fall 
is  not  sufficiently  explained  by  gravitation,  to  be  sure :  then 
add  the  resistance  of  the  air.  But  this  is  not  enough;  then 
add  the  attraction  of  other  raindrops.  This  too  is  not  enough : 
then  add  other  causes  indefinitely.  Of  the  person's  deed  the 
same  holds.  My  writing  of  this  sentence  is  determined  by 
my  desire  to  express  a  certain  belief,  by  my  past  philosoph- 
ical education,  my  personal  preferences,  and  so  on.  In  each 
case  alike,  the  whole  event,  the  complete  deed,  is  a  resultant 
to  which  no  finite  sum  of  causes  is  adequate.  But  the 
determinist  may  retort  —  if  you  had  infinite  knowledge,  you 
could  make  an  infinite  sum  of  causes  which  would  be  ade- 
quate. What  would  then  be  left  unexplained  would  be  only 
the  form  of  individuality.  My  so-called  free  act  —  can  you 
name  any  specific  detail  of  it  which  is  not,  had  you  full 
information  of  my  past  history,  quite  foreseeable  ?  Its 
freedom  lies  only  in  the  fact  that  it  is  a  unique,  individual 
event,  whereas  individuality  is  not  wholly  reducible  to  con- 
ceptual terms.  The  Bergsonian  freedom  is  not  true  in- 
determination: "  this  "  he  said  "  does  not  mean  that  free 
action  is  capricious,  unreasonable  action ;  to  behave  accord- 
ing to  caprice  is  to  oscillate  mechanically."  It  is  not  the 
freedom  which  James  defended,  of  genuine  alternatives  in 
conduct,  and  real  possibilities.  The  intuitionistic  freedom 
might  be  admitted  by  the  veriest  fatalist  as  far  as  the  con- 
tents of  his  future  deeds  are  concerned  —  provided  only  he 
acknowledge  that  what  happens  constitutes  an  unanalyzable 
whole.  And  while  such  barren  freedom  does  not  preclude 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    309 

its  opposite,  it  cannot  possibly  help  to  account  for  what 
must  seem  very  singular:  that  we  can  come  so  near  to  pre- 
dicting what  a  given  man  whom  we  know  will  do  in  a  given 
case.  Approximate  regularity  is  its  critical  point.  Always 
it  can  reformulate  itself  after  being  shattered  on  this  point 
—  for  it  insists  that  the  determination  was  due  to  analysis 
which  is,  metaphysically,  falsification.  But  its  ability  to 
reformulate  itself  is  secured  at  the  cost  of  fertility;  its  free- 
dom of  individuality  is  so  general  that  it  covers  the  fated 
deed  of  passion  as  truly  as  the  deliberate  moral  choice. 

Turn  we  now  to  the  mystic's  vision  of  God.  Is  it  not  from 
its  very  purity  and  immediacy,  incoherent  ?  Have  not  the 
mystics  themselves  denied  every  predicate  of  the  ineffable 
One  ?  Recall  the  quotation  from  Plotinus.  Yet  careful 
interpretation  is  needed  here.  The  ecstasy  is  a  private  ex- 
perience; herein  it  stands  out  in  contrast  with  sense-in- 
tuition, which  is  social  and  communicable.  Both  ecstasy 
and  sensation  are  direct  experience  of  reality  —  so  at  any 
rate  the  experient  is  convinced.  But  because  man  is  so  made 
that  what  one  senses,  his  fellows  also  sense,  he  can  com- 
municate, that  is,  describe,  his  sensations.  Because  you  and 
I  both  see  the  round  yellow  moon,  we  can  use  the  same  word 
for  it;  and  on  the  basis  of  a  large  group  of  these  same-for-all 
objects  we  can  establish  a  system  of  communication  — 
language  —  by  which  to  convey  to  one  another  our  own 
experiences.  In  the  sphere  of  sense-intuition,  this  com- 
monness of  the  data  is  the  usual,  normal  thing.  But  the 
mystic's  ecstasy  is  rare;  it  is  not  the  normal  thing.  It  has 
little  or  no  sensation-content.  Consequently  the  mystic 
cannot  point  with  his  finger,  as  at  the  moon,  and  expect 
others  to  see  what  he  sees,  and  invent  a  name  to  refer  to 
their  common  object  of  vision.  To  the  majority  of  men  his 
experience  becomes  incommunicable.  The  most  he  can  say 


310  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

in  the  way  of  description  is  "  what  you  see  when  you  come 
into  such  and  such  a  psychical  state  —  fasting,  prayer, 
humility,  etc.  -  "  or  perhaps  he  may  speak  by  analogy  and 
parable.  It  is  as  if  one  of  us  were  born  with  the  faculty  of 
seeing  a  new  colour.  He  could  not  communicate  it,  de- 
scribe it,  except  to  another  who  had  the  same  sense-datum. 
That  however  does  not  in  the  least  mean  that  what  he  sees 
is  inherently  indescribable,  a  mere  zero  for  analysis,  incap- 
able of  definition.  The  difficulty  is  subjective,  not  objective. 
The  intellectualists  have  seized  upon  this  human  weakness 
and  distorted  it  into  an  objective  irrationality.  There  is  no 
more  reason  for  condemning  the  revelations  of  mysticism  as 
essentially  incoherent  than  for  declaring  my  perception  of 
red  colour  incoherent.  The  one,  as  the  other,  is  an  imme- 
diate datum,  but  that  is  no  reason  why  it  should  rule  out 
mediation  by  comparison,  analysis,  or  other  conceptual  ac- 
tivity. When  Royce  defined  mysticism  as  the  doctrine  that 
"  to  be  real  means  to  be  felt  as  the  absolute  goal  and  conse- 
quent quietus  of  all  thinking  and  so  of  striving"  (World 
and  Individual,  vol.  I,  p.  83),  his  statement  would  force 
upon  the  view  a  needless  exclusion ;  and  an  exclusion  which 
enables  him  to  refute  the  type.  For  the  mystic,  to  be  real 
does  mean  "  to  be  felt  as  the  absolute  goal  of  all  thinking 
and  striving  "  but  it  by  no  means  follows  that  it  is  the  "  con- 
sequent quietus."  If  I  am  looking  to  ascertain  what  is  the 
colour  of  the  horse  in  yonder  field,  the  goal  of  my  thought 
and  striving  is  attained  when  I  get  a  sense-intuition  of  the 
white  horse;  but  this  is  not,  in  any  pertinent  sense,  the 
quietus  of  all  thought.  I  may  go  on  to  think  about  the  white 
colour.  Because  the  mystic  attains  a  state  of  intellectual 
peace  and  rest,  is  he  never  to  think  further  about  God  ?  As 
well  say  that  because  after  a  walk  I  sit  down,  I  can  never 
get  up. 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM     3 1 1 

But  what  reason  have  we  for  trusting  the  revelation  of  the 
mystic  ?  Grant  that  sometime,  perhaps,  the  human  race 
will  have  so  developed  its  religious  sense  that  men  can  be 
assured  of  common  revelations,  of  visions  shared  by  all,  so 
that  they  may  institute  a  mystical  vocabulary,  even  as  now 
we  have  a  sense- vocabulary  —  grant  all  this,  we  say;  but 
what  guarantee  is  there  of  the  truth  of  these  revelations  ? 
Have  they  any  authority  in  themselves  ?  To  which  we  must 
reply,  yes.  They  would  possess  all  the  authority  that  our 
impressions  of  the  material  world  now  possess;  and  prob- 
ably no  one  would  think  of  questioning  their  validity.  It  is 
now,  when  the  vision  of  God  is  rare,  that  it  is  suspect.  Yet 
it  should  not  be  so.  "  Whatever  is  very  clearly  and  dis- 
tinctly apprehended  is  true  "  said  Descartes;  and  we  have 
tried  to  show  that  all  thinkers  implicitly  follow  the  dictum. 
What  I  alone  see,  if  I  see  it  clearly,  I  must  believe.  Of 
course  there  is  always  liability  to  error;  but  error  is  present 
only  where  the  various  intuita  are  inconsistent,  or  are  con- 
tradicted by  some  other  accredited  fact.  The  only  mark  of 
error  which  the  intellect  knows  is  contradiction.  In  so  far, 
then,  as  the  mystic's  deliverances  are  not  contrary  to  estab- 
lished facts,  he  must  (and  does)  believe  them.  On  its 
positive  side,  the  method  of  intuitionism  is  irrefutable. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  many  mystics  have  gone  be- 
yond this  point,  and  insisted  upon  ruling  out  the  intellect. 
If  Plotinus  did  it,  what  wonder  that  the  lesser  lights  have 
done  it  too  ?  Now  it  is  just  this  exclusion  that  has  oc- 
casioned the  revolt  of  intellect  and  the  endless  warfare  of 
religion  and  reason,  of  faith  and  science.  Not  that  the 
mystic  alone  is  to  blame;  the  rationalist  would  no  doubt  in 
any  case  have  tried  to  proscribe  every  method  of  attaining 
truth  but  his  own:  such  is  human  nature.  But  the  mystics 
have  made  a  very  thoroughgoing  attempt  to  discredit 


312  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

reason's  methods;  and  we  must  now  consider  the  question, 
whether  they  are  right  in  accusing  the  latter  of  the  dialectical 
contradictions. 

The  alleged  suicide  of  reason  was  presented  in  two  ways: 
(i)    reason,  creating  a  fictitious  concept  —  the  Naught  — 
has  hereby  conjured  up  the  great  mystery  of  Being  which  it 
cannot  solve:  it  has  laid  upon  its  own  shoulders  a  burden 
which  it  cannot  lift.    (2)  All  thought  leads  to  antinomies  — 
particularly  thought  about  the  supreme  reality,  God.    Let 
us  take  these  in  order. 

It  will  be  enough  to  show  that  mysticism  offers  no  escape 
from  the  toils.  Now  first  a  general  reflection:  suppose 
reason  does  fashion  this  "  pseudo-idea  "  of  blank  nothing- 
ness; how  can  we  say  that  it  is  no  true  idea  ?  Is  not  that 
saying  that  it  is  nothing  ?  —  no  great  paradox,  surely.  That 
was  all  it  pretended  to  be  —  and  it  is  enough  to  make  us 
wonder  why  there  is  anything  "  positive."  It  seems  as  if 
this  little  germ  of  disease  were  too  small  to  be  caught.  But 
more  specifically:  M.  Bergson  devoted  several  pages  to  the 
demolition  of  the  idea;  but  the  demolition  amounts  to  this, 
that  what  we  are  really  thinking  of  when  we  think  we  are 
thinking  of  nothing,  is  the  absence  of  some  expected  or 
desired  thing,  which  we  find  replaced  by  something  else. 
Have  we  then  no  concept  of  the  limit  which  we  approach, 
as  one  thing  after  another  is  removed  ?  Bergson,  who  does 
not  favour  the  pure  concept,  cannot  admit  such  a  limiting 
notion.  But  it  is  a  genuine  notion,  for  it  can  be  defined.  For 
instance,  take  Schroeder's  definition  of  the  "null-class": 
that  which  is  a  member  of  all  classes.  It  belongs  at  the  same 
time  to  mutually  exclusive  classes  —  to  the  class  of  white 
things  and  the  class  of  things  that  are  not  white.  This  is, 
perhaps,  self-contradictory;  but  "  nothing "  is  the  one 
privileged  concept  which  may  be  inconsistent  with  itself. 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    3 1 3 

"  Nothing  is  self-contradictory  "  would  not  break  the  law 
of  contradiction.  That  the  definition  has  sense,  may  be 
seen  if  we  remember  that  one  often  says:  "  that  class  is 
composed  of  so  and  so,  and  nothing  else  besides."  Ordinary 
usage,  then,  would  seem  to  agree  with  Schroeder's  definition. 
The  concept  of  nothing  is  a  perfectly  good  static  concept. 
Of  course  Professor  Bergson  is  unable  to  give  it  a  place  in 
his  universe,  because  his  universe  is  a  dynamic  one.  But  we 
have  tried  to  show  that  the  dynamic  view  sees  only  one  side 
of  reality. 

If  then  the  concept  of  the  naught  is  a  ghost  that  cannot  be 
laid,  the  mystery  of  being  returns  upon  us.  The  mystic 
does  not  abolish  it;  he  only  turns  away  from  it.  He  solves 
no  difficulty;  he  ignores  it.  And  the  intellectualist  takes  a 
just  revenge  when  he  accuses  the  mystic  of  himself  explain- 
ing nothing.  Mysticism  has  become  a  synonym  for  mystery. 
But  the  great  human  problem  is  not  answered  by  such 
means.  Ever  more  we  have  the  ignominious  spectacle  of 
mutual  accusation,  a  perpetually  reiterated  tu  quoque.  So 
long  as  the  mystery  of  being  is  not  dissolved  by  reason, 
so  long  mysticism  shares  the  guilt  of  its  counterpart, 
rationalism. 

The  situation  is  not  very  different  as  regards  the  dialectic. 
The  fluid,  we  are  told,  cannot  be  defined  in  terms  of  the  solid. 
The  flight  of  the  arrow  is  not  a  series  of  momentary  posi- 
tions. Well,  then,  we  ask,  what  else  is  it  ?  It  is  the  trans- 
eunt  fact  of  passing  through  those  positions.  But  intellect 
always  comes  back  and  inquires,  what  does  this  "  passing 
through  "  mean  ?  It  means  being  now  in  one  position,  then 
in  another,  and  so  on.  The  only  way  to  avoid  this  static 
interpretation  is  to  forbid  the  question.  But  we  have  no 
right  to  choke  off  the  reason.  The  only  satisfactory  out- 
come will  be  one  which  admits  the  right  to  analyze  motion 


314  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

into  static  terms,  as  well  as  the  right  to  intuit  those  terms 
together  into  a  process.  To  insist  upon  the  claims  of  in- 
tuition to  the  exclusion  of  analysis,  is  again  but  to  ignore  the 
difficulty.  And  the  same  is  true  of  the  dialectic  of  predica- 
tion. If  it  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  a  self-contradiction  to  say 
"  A  is  B  "  then  we  do  not  help  matters  by  refusing  to  de- 
scribe anything.  That  refusal  would  indeed  render  the 
intuitionist  speechless.  Professor  Bergson  would  not  be 
entitled  to  say  "  reality  is  fluent,  is  life,  tune,  creation,  etc." 
To  be  sure,  the  opponents  of  mysticism,  and  too  often  the 
mystics  themselves,  urge  that  the  vision  of  reality  leads 
only  to  silence.  But  we  have  seen  that  this  is  no  necessary 
consequence  of  the  intuitive  attitude.  The  alleged  incom- 
municability  of  the  mystical  message  is  only  the  difficulty  of 
suitably  expressing  an  unusual  experience.  And  the  mystics 
have  written  volumes,  and  believe  themselves  therein  to 
have  written  the  truth,  in  descriptions  and  predications  con- 
cerning the  Divine  attributes.  All  this  they  could  not  have 
done,  were  their  dialectic  just.  Whoso  condemns  thought, 
thereby  condemns  intuition  also.  Whoso  says  that  God 
transcends  all  adjectives,  makes  God  not  richer  but  poorer. 
We  do  not  at  present  urge  that  the  dialectic  is  unsound,  that 
God  is  fitly  defined  as  person,  as  love,  as  infinitely  mighty, 
omniscient,  etc. ;  we  urge  only  that  if  these,  or  other  attri- 
butes, may  not  be  predicated  of  Him,  then  the  mystic  has 
nothing  to  teach  and  indeed  has  himself  learned  nothing. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  do  insist  that  the  dialectic  is  a  sign 
of  some  grave  disease  in  human  thought;  and  we  have  said 
that  those  who  refuse  to  pay  attention  to  it  are  themselves 
living  instances  of  it  —  for  they  war  with  one  another  pre- 
cisely as  thought  is  supposed  to  war  with  intuition  and  with 
itself.  The  mystic  is  eternally  right  in  pointing  out  this 
disease,  and  in  doing  this  he  soars  above  any  other  partisan 


INTELLECTUALISM,  PRAGMATISM,  INTUITIONISM    3 1 5 

type;  but  he  does  not  heal  the  malady.  He  simply  tries  to 
forget  it.  And  this  is  good  so  far;  it  helps  him  to  new  and 
positive  information  about  the  universe,  which  he  would 
forego  if  he  remained  immersed  in  the  problem  of  the 
antinomies.  This  releasing  of  attention  is  beneficial;  it  is 
necessary  if  the  patient  would  not  die  of  skeptical  despair. 
The  mystic,  the  intuitionist,  let  in  fresh  air  into  the  sick- 
room; they  raise  the  blinds,  that  we  may  gaze  out  upon 
reality.  But  with  all  this  positive  good  that  they  do,  they 
do  not  touch  that  secret  source  of  philosophy's  perennial 
quarrels,  that  debilitating  malady  which  always  prevents 
man  from  going  forth  to  chart  the  world  of  reality.  And  as 
their  attitude  is  broader  than  that  of  any  preceding  type,  so 
their  critical  point  is  broader :  it  is  all  thought,  all  description. 
The  knot  of  the  dialectic  they  cannot  untie. 

Whoever  has  learned  the  lesson  of  mysticism,  knows  that 
human  thought  is  saturated  with  hostilities  and  that  there- 
fore any  type  of  philosophy  which  makes  one  aspect  of 
reality  alone  fundamental  is  bound  to  be  opposed  by  another 
which  selects  a  contrasting  aspect  as  its  base.  All  partisan 
types  are  hereby  condemned  —  including  mysticism  itself. 
It  is  true  that  we  have  not  gone  through  every  one  of  those 
types  which  have  appeared  in  history.  Still  less  have  we 
exhausted  the  count  of  all  possible  partial  types.  Many 
possible  ones,  doubtless,  would  never  become  actual;  for 
the  angles  from  which  they  are  conceived  would  not  seem 
interesting  enough  to  men.  Human  beings,  finding  them- 
selves attractive  objects  of  study,  have  thought  it  worth 
while  to  characterize  the  universe  as  function-of-human- 
thought  (subjectivism) ;  but  it  is  hardly  to  be  expected  that 
any  one  would  undertake  to  define  the  system  of  reality  in 
terms  of  the  ludicrous,  or  as  a  complex  function  of  plane 
surfaces.  Innumerable  world-views  of  this  sort  might  be 


316  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

elaborated,  but  their  critical  points  are  too  obvious  to  re- 
quire pointing  out.  And  after  what  we  have  said,  it  seems 
that  we  scarcely  need  take  up  the  further  partisan  types 
which  have  appeared.  Such  one-sided  philosophies  as  the 
positivism  of  August  Comte,  the  naturalism  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  the  "  Energetics  "  of  Professor  Ostwald,  and 
others  equally  narrow,  fail  so  clearly  to  account  for  facts 
like  consciousness,  value,  etc.,  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  con- 
sider them  in  detail.  Under  this  head,  of  course,  comes  that 
system  of  optimism  known  as  Christian  Science;  a  system 
which,  however  practically  useful,  is  unable  to  account  for 
the  illusions  that  we  suffer  of  bodily  pain  and  weakness, 
and  for  evil  generally.  Once  for  all,  it  seems,  we  must  give 
up  hope  of  constructing  a  chart  of  reality  which  is  to  satisfy 
the  innate  craving  for  knowledge,  in  terms  of  any  one 
element  or  part  of  the  whole. 


CHAPTER  DC 

THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS 

above  failures  are  no  bar  to  a  new  reform.  But 
J-  this  one  will  differ  as  it  were  in  kind;  it  is  not  to  be  a 
rival  on  the  same  plane  with  them,  but  in  a  higher  dimen- 
sion. The  preceding  reforms  erred  by  one-sidedness.  All 
the  promising  angles  from  which  the  world  might  be  viewed 
were  tried,  one  after  another:  subject,  object,  individual, 
universal,  static,  dynamic,  mind,  matter,  biological  adjust- 
ment, pure  theory,  will,  reason,  feeling  —  yet  each,  however 
interesting  in  itself,  failed  to  fulfill  its  promise.  And  the 
failure  was  always  due  to  the  same  vice :  the  vice  of  so  con- 
ceiving each  base  as  to  exclude  at  least  one-half  the  universe. 
The  penalty  immediately  followed,  that  the  maps  furnished 
by  each  system,  traced  but  a  little  way  from  the  point  of 
departure,  ended  in  a  blank  sheet.  Does  not  the  remedy  at 
once  suggest  itself,  of  putting  together  all  these  fragments  ? 
Combination  or  synthesis,  then,  will  be  the  watchword  from 
now  on.  This  lesson  has,  to  be  sure,  been  learned  again  and 
again  in  the  history  of  thought.  In  each  successive  epoch  we 
find  men  running  through  the  partial  types  of  interest  to 
them,  ever  refuting  one  another,  until  at  last  a  harmonizer 
appears.  Such  was  Aristotle  at  the  end  of  Greek  phi- 
losophy, Aquinas  at  the  close  of  the  mediaeval  epoch, 
Leibnitz  for  the  Renaissance,  Hegel  for  the  modern  period. 
These  thinkers  believed  themselves  to  have  healed  the  phil- 
osophic disease  by  the  device  of  breadth  or  all-inclusiveness. 
This  notion  of  all-inclusiveness  attracts  the  human  thinker 
not  only  on  logical,  but  also  on  emotional  and  practical 

317 


3l8  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

grounds.  For  instance,  there  is  what  we  may  call  the  quanti- 
tative instinct.  If  the  partial  types  make  unacknowledged 
appeal  to  the  qualitative  instinct  —  as  when  mind  is  deemed 
fundamental  because  it  is  better  thanmatter,  or  person  because 
it  is  higher  than  thing,  or  universal  because  more  independent 
than  particular  —  equally  does  the  synthetic  motive  gratify 
our  love  of  immensity.  Quantity  is  no  slight  factor  in  our 
estimation  of  values.  We  naturally  desire  to  increase  our 
circle  of  friends,  our  height,  our  progeny,  our  strength,  our 
material  possessions.  If  great  riches  appear  an  end  to  many, 
it  is  largely  the  magnitude  of  the  end  that  attracts  them. 
Cities  pride  themselves  upon  a  doubled  population,  nations 
upon  expansion  of  territory,  authors  upon  the  number  of 
their  readers,  and  so  on.  The  adjectives  great!  grand! 
magnificent!  bear  witness  to  our  admiration  of  mere  quan- 
tity. Who,  if  he  could  help  it,  would  be  diminutive,  or  thin, 
or  poorly-informed,  or  for  that  matter  limited  in  any  way  ? 
So  in  our  thinking  we  do  homage  to  a  hidden  major  premise, 
which  declares  that  the  comprehensive  view  is  the  true 
view.  We  value  massiveness  and  extensiveness  for  them- 
selves. Intensity  is  a  sign  of  superiority,  but  extensity  is  the 
peculiar  mark  of  genius.  The  poet  has  expressed  the  same 
motive  in  his  eulogy  of  our  great  American  leader,  President 
Lincoln: 

His  was  no  mountain-peak  of  mind 
Thrusting  to  thin  air  through  our  cloudy  bars, 
A  sea-mark  now,  now  lost  in  vapours  blind, 
Broad  prairie  rather,  genial,  level-lined, 
Fruitful  and  friendly  for  all  humankind. 

Yet,  just  because  largeness  is  an  attribute  of  powerful 
brutes,  of  dead  matter,  even  of  empty  space,  its  appeal  lacks 
to  the  cultivated  mind  a  certain  effectiveness.  A  less  naive 
motive  is  that  of  balance,  impartiality,  justice.  We  like  to 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  319 

see  everything  get  its  rights;  we  feel  that  even  the  smallest 
details  of  reality  should  have  their  place.  In  a  sense,  every 
distinct  fact  should  count  as  one,  and  none  as  more  than  one. 
A  person  should  not  be  more  real  than  a  gnat,  a  nation 
than  the  least  of  its  citizens.  This  is  akin  to  what  we  call 
the  objective-mindedness  or  impersonality  of  science;  but 
equally  do  the  sporting  instincts  testify  to  it  in  the  phrase 
"  a  fair  field  and  no  favour."  One  might  also  quote  Scrip- 
ture: "The  very  hairs  of  your  head  are  all  numbered," 
"  Not  a  sparrow  falleth,"  etc.  Not  that  this  impartiality 
would  overlook  distinctions  of  quality  and  value;  it  is 
rather  that  it  would  reduce  them  to  distinctions  of  inclusive- 
ness.  If  a  man  does  somehow  count  for  more  in  the  scheme 
of  things  than  a  dog,  it  is  because  he  feels  and  thinks  and 
wills  all  that  the  dog  can,  and  much  besides.  The  winner  in 
the  metaphysical  race  is  he  who  brings  the  greatest  number 
of  contestants  to  victory.  Cooperation,  not  competition; 
a  balanced  unity  in  which  all  play  their  appointed  parts: 
such  is  the  mark  of  reality  as  the  synthetic  type  sees  it.  To 
the  partisan  types,  this  attitude  is  related  as  classic  to  ro- 
mantic art.  Those  types  persuade  by  their  positiveness  and 
virility;  this  one  by  its  rounded  completeness.  There  will 
always  be  in  the  human  mind  a  presupposition  which  reads 
"  the  account  that  gives  a  place  to  every  fact  and  motive  is 
the  true  account." 

As  the  rain  descends  upon  the  good  and  the  evil  alike,  and 
the  just  judge  gives  ear  to  the  pleas  of  all,  so  the  present 
type  accepts  every  contribution  to  knowledge.  To  speak  in 
ethical  terms,  it  gains  by  yielding;  its  spirit  is  not  aggressive, 
but  meek;  it  rules  by  love  rather  than  fear.  Its  code  is  that 
of  non-resistance.  To  the  fighting  spirit  which  imbues  the 
philosophic  partisan,  such  a  method  is  almost  contemptible. 
Yet  we  found  that  idealism  attempted  to  synthesize  sub- 


320  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

jectivism  and  objectivism;  and  Great  Objectivism  in  its 
own  way  strove  for  the  same  end.  Harmony  is,  at  any  rate, 
unavoidably  a  good  for  us ;  and  it  would  seem  that  the  syn- 
thetic spirit  is  nearer  than  the  competitive  to  that  appre- 
ciation of  peace,  mutual  forbearance,  and  kindness  which 
distinguishes  the  modern  western  consciousness.  Indeed, 
synthesis,  with  its  motto  of  equal  opportunity  for  all  views, 
is  close  to  the  ideal  of  social  democracy. 

But  unlike  socialistic  enterprises,  it  is  not  "  radical  "  as 
that  word  is  commonly  used ;  it  is  conservative.  The  har- 
monizing systems  do  not  wash  everything  off  the  slate  and 
draw  the  picture  entirely  anew.  They  would  not  destroy, 
but  fulfill;  they  countenance  no  revolts.  Upon  them,  in 
consequence,  is  thrust  the  thankless  role  of  orthodoxy. 
They  uphold  the  main  tradition  of  religion,  morality,  gov- 
ernment, culture  in  general;  they  are  eminently  respectable; 
humanity's  right  wing.  Hegel  was  always  a  model  boy,  and 
to  his  contemporaries  his  mature  intellect  must  have  seemed 
flawless.  Caird,  Bradley,  Green,  Bosanquet  and  that  ilk: 
what  an  air  of  finish  they  have,  of  having  already  considered 
everything  that  a  finite  critic  could  urge,  what  a  quiet  supe- 
riority! It  is  this  rectitude  that  secretly  aggravates  the 
reader.  The  school  does  not  arouse  sympathy;  there  is  no 
romance,  as  of  the  elan  vital,  or  the  Great  Self,  or  the  starry 
Ideas.  One  feels  himself  shamed  by  the  type's  perfection. 
This  of  itself  would  render  the  synthetic  attitude  unpopular 
today,  when  men  feel  more  for  the  under  than  the  upper  dog, 
and  admire  the  virtues  of  dash  and  brilliancy  more  than 
those  of  patience,  subtlety  and  breadth.  Certain  free  spirits 
find  a  well-appointed  scheme  constraining,  and  dub  the  syn- 
thetic system  "  closed."  And  they  in  their  turn  pride  them- 
selves on  their  freedom  and  openness  of  mind.  How  often 
have  we  heard  the  opponents  of  "  absolutism  "  speak  thus: 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  321 

"  I  have  no  closed  system,  I  want  only  the  facts!  "  This  is 
much  as  if  a  starving  man  should  boast  of  his  empty  belly. 
What  is  there  to  be  proud  of  in  having  no  chart  of  the  uni- 
verse ?  System,  provided  it  is  true,  can  be  no  bar  to  further 
investigation,  and  the  obstinacy  which  refuses  it  is  the  more 
dangerous  because  it  assumes  the  cloak  of  modesty.  The 
satisfaction  of  the  absolutist  in  his  system  is  not  more  vicious 
than  the  priggishness  of  the  blatant  empiricist,  be  he 
"  radical  "  or  "  positivist." 

The  conservatism  of  the  synthetic  point  of  view  is  perhaps 
the  source  of  that  impression  of  finality  which  it  alone  seems 
to  convey.  A  federation  of  all  the  states  in  the  world  is  not 
open  to  aggression  from  without.  When  every  enemy  is  wel- 
comed and  incorporated,  there  seems  to  be  no  possibility  of 
overthrow.  The  partial  types  had  avowed  hostilities,  and 
each  kept  its  place  by  a  burdensome  militarism;  the  syn- 
thetic attitude  is  a  sort  of  universal  disarmament.  Each 
partial  type  was  in  unstable  equilibrium;  the  synthetic  ap- 
pears to  possess  a  stable  equilibrium.  As  a  ball  in  a  hollow, 
pushed  aside,  is  brought  back  by  gravitation,  so  any  new 
reflections  are  attracted,  by  force  of  the  synthetic  motive, 
and  assimilated  into  the  system.  The  system  guarantees 
its  own  permanence  as  a  clock  perpetuates  its  own  motion. 
It  is  not  easy  to  resist  the  suggestion  that  we  are  now  in  a 
higher  dimension,  which  enables  us  to  reconcile  the  factions 
as  an  area  unites  lines  of  various  direction.  With  a  click 
the  mechanism  settles  into  place;  the  circle  is  completed. 

Such  are  some  of  the  motives  which  urge  philosophers  to 
a  synthetic  type  of  view.  Combined,  they  offer  a  front  of 
dignity  and  majesty;  any  partial  type  feels,  before  them,  as 
a  rebellious  child  rebuked  by  a  wise  parent.  When  it  de- 
fends itself,  it  is  told  that  its  reasons  have  already  been  con- 
sidered, and  as  much  as  is  good  in  them  embodied  in  the 


322  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

counsel  of  the  elder.  It  is  not  a  case  of  strife  between  chil- 
dren, but  between  maturity  and  immaturity.  The  adult  has 
lived  through  and  absorbed  the  experience  of  the  child;  let 
the  child  be  docile!  No,  the  system  cannot  easily  be  attacked 
from  without.  Like  the  ocean,  it  yields  to  the  striking  body 
only  to  swallow  it  up  in  the  end.  There  is  just  one  way  of 
testing  it:  by  its  own  method.  Give  it  rope,  let  it  develop 
unchecked;  if  it  brings  to  light  no  internal  discrepancies,  it 
is  the  final  system  that  men  have  sought. 

Well!  it  has  developed  unchecked.  The  synthetic  motive 
has  produced  its  fruits  —  for  they  are  more  than  one.  We 
have  already  mentioned  Aristotle,  Aquinas,  Leibnitz, 
Hegel:  these  are  the  greater  figures.  There  are  also  lesser 
ones,  synthesizers  who  did  not  proffer  an  all-inclusive  com- 
bination, but  carried  the  harmonizing  process  up  to  a  cer- 
tain point  and  excluded  the  remainder.  The  latter  however 
are  not  the  simon-pure  instances;  we  confine  our  attention 
to  those  instances.  Yet,  as  is  well  known,  they  too  differ; 
they  deny  one  another.  Can  there  be  then  a  flaw  in  the 
synthetic  attitude  ? 

Let  us  ask  how  divergencies  might  arise.  The  parts  of  the 
world  cohere;  now  in  what  way  do  they  cohere,  by  what 
principle  are  they  united  ?  For  the  whole  is  not  a  mere  con- 
glomerate, but  an  ordered  system.  We  wish  then  to  see 
explicitly  the  mark  of  the  combination  on  each  article.  As 
the  stock-breeder  brands  his  animals,  so  the  whole  should 
brand  each  part.  Select  some  particular  object:  a  rock  on 
the  mountain-side.  Examine  it  carefully:  do  you  not  see 
that  its  internal  structure  implies  that  certain  external 
agents  have  been  at  work  ?  So,  perhaps,  with  every  object; 
yes,  even  the  mental  ones.  A's  character  could  not  be  what 
it  is,  were  not  the  village  where  he  lives  a  quiet  hamlet  — 
which  again  depends  on  the  political  situation,  etc.,  etc. 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  323 

Such  connectedness  between  one  thing  and  another  we  call 
logical.  A  philosophic  system  which  declares  that  every 
single  thing  and  part  thus  implies  every  other,  is  a  logical  or 
rational  synthesis.  But  it  is  not  the  only  possible  kind  of 
synthesis.  The  things  and  persons  and  forces  that  constitute 
the  universe  might  not  logically  imply  one  another;  each 
and  all  might  have  been  created  by  fiat  of  some  Higher 
Being  so  as  to  make  a  harmony,  a  total  of  beauty  and  order. 
In  that  case  the  principle  of  connection  would  be  called  not 
a  logical  but  an  aesthetic  one.  And  perhaps  there  are  other 
kinds  of  synthesis.  It  is  possible,  then,  that  the  synthetic 
philosophers  will  differ  as  to  the  kind  of  synthesis  which 
governs  the  world.  The  principle  which  combines  may  not 
be  the  same  for  all.  Each  owner  may  have  his  own  brand. 
And  we  find,  historically,  at  least  three  types:  the  Hegelian 
or  logical,  the  Leibnitzian  or  aesthetic,  and  the  Thomistic- 
Aristotelian,  which  we  shall  later  characterize  as  the  practi- 
cal type.  Each  of  these  wars  with  the  others,  to  say  nothing 
of  conflict  with  the  partial  types. 

A  full-blooded  synthetist  will,  to  be  sure,  not  like  to  admit 
that  this  split  is  possible.  He  will  say  that  the  real  nature  of 
each  particular  thing  cannot  be  distinguished  from  its  con- 
nectedness with  all  the  rest.  The  mode  of  synthesis  is  to 
him  nothing  apart  from  the  things  connected.  The  com- 
bining principle  is  not  something  over  and  above  the  parts; 
it  is  the  parts,  for  each  part,  truly  understood,  is  the  whole. 
An  alleged  principle  of  Good  is  not  to  be  contrasted  with  a 
principle  of  logical  implication,  for  hi  the  last  analysis 
neither  one  has  any  sense  without  the  other.  This  attempt, 
he  will  say,  to  single  out  and  define  the  principle  of  combina- 
tion is  but  a  recurrence  of  the  old  partisan  attitude;  for  it 
attempts  to  render  the  whole  into  terms  of  some  one  aspect, 
that  of  intellect,  or  value,  or  practical  need. 


324  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

But  we  must  remember  that  the  synthetic  view  by  itself 
and  with  no  admixture  of  anything  else  simply  tells  us  that 
the  whole  alone  is  real.  While  this  may  turn  out  to  be 
true,  and  to  be  as  far  as  it  goes  a  source  of  gratification,  it 
is  not  the  only  sort  of  gratification  which  we  seek.  The 
philosophic  instinct  will  never  be  content  with  a  dogmatic 
statement  that  everything  implies  the  whole.  It  must  see 
that  it  does  so ;  and  to  see  that  is  to  see  how.  Unless  this  con- 
nectedness is  made  articulate,  we  shall  have  nothing  but  an 
unintelligent  mysticism,  such  as  the  synthetists  themselves 
do  not  love.  The  penalty  of  refusing  to  make  clear  the 
mode  of  synthesis  is  that  we  are  limited  to  assertions  like 
"  all  is  one,"  "  all  is  experience,"  "  experience  is  individual," 
etc.,  which,  positive  though  they  are  verbally,  are  no  more 
illuminating  than  the  Eleatic, "  Being  is."  And,  historically, 
the  harmonizers  have  always  tried  to  ascribe  some  precise 
character  to  the  mode  of  connection. 

Here,  accordingly,  in  the  fact  that  synthesis  itself  admits 
different  interpretations,  we  may  find  a  little  rift  where 
strife  enters.  At  any  rate,  suspicion  is  aroused,  and  we  must 
examine  with  care  each  form  of  the  general  type.  Moreover, 
when  we  recall  that  even  after  the  synthetic  systems  are 
known,  men  have  gone  back  to  the  partisan  ones,  there  is  the 
more  reason  for  doubt.  To  the  study  of  the  several  forms, 
then,  we  proceed.  We  begin  with  that  which  arose  nearest 
to  our  own  time,  viz.,  the  Hegelian  synthesis. 

THE  HEGELIAN  TYPE:   ABSOLUTISM 

Here  we  treat  of  certain  tendencies  which  are  perhaps  less 
emphasized  by  Hegel  than  by  the  "  neo-Hegelians  ";  on  the 
whole  we  prefer  the  later  form  in  which  the  Master's  doc- 
trine has  appeared,  as  it  is  the  more  likely  to  have  pruned 
away  the  extravagancies  and  to  have  developed  the  funda- 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  325 

mental  points  to  their  logical  conclusion ;  in  short,  to  have 
realized  the  type  in  its  essentials.  We  do  not,  of  course, 
attempt  to  be  just  to  the  historical  Hegel,  or  to  the  whole 
systems  of  such  modern  thinkers  as  Bradley,  Bosanquet, 
et  al.  As  we  have  so  often  said,  the  types  we  portray  are 
scarcely  ever  found  naked,  but  they  are  none  the  less 
influential. 

Hegel  said  "  Whatever  is  real  is  rational,  and  whatever  is 
rational  is  real."  He  left  no  such  motto  about  the  good  or 
the  beautiful  being  real.  And  rationality  means  mutual 
implication  between  the  parts  or  aspects  of  the  universe, 
such  that  all  together  form  an  organic  unity  or  "  absolute 
spirit."  Everything  depends  upon  and  implies  everything 
else.  The  rationalism  of  the  view,  however,  is  not  exclusive 
of  empiricism.  His  ground  for  this  belief  —  or  at  least  the 
modern  Hegelian's  ground  —  is  no  a  priori  axiom,  or  set  of 
them,  but  empirical  investigation.  Philosophy,  he  alleges, 
starts  with  no  presuppositions.  It  has  no  "  intellectualist  " 
principles  valid  in  abstracto,  coining  reality  out  of  them- 
selves. Reason  is  rather  the  crown  of  the  whole,  than  the 
creator  of  the  whole.  Opponents  have  often  failed  to  see 
this  and  have  characterized  the  view  as  abstract  intellec- 
tualism,  or  transcendentalism,  or  pure  rationalism.  But 
that  is  unjust  to  the  breadth  of  the  system.  Whatever  rules 
of  reason  hold,  are  discovered  in  the  materials  of  reality,  in 
the  course  of  human  history,  in  the  flowers,  the  earth's 
crust,  the  clouds>  the  stars.  In  the  deduction  of  the  cate- 
gories it  may  be  convenient  to  start  with  a  certain  one  (e.g., 
Being),  but  that  is  for  purposes  of  exposition.  If  we  con- 
sidered any  fact — e.  g.,  a  lead-pencil  —  we  should  find  that 
its  lead  and  wood  and  their  properties  implied  all  others  in 
the  universe;  but  the  inquiry  would  be  more  complicated 
than  if  arranged  in  the  order  of  Hegel's  Logic.  The  system 


326  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

is  thus  —  according  to  its  defenders  —  in  no  sense  arbitrary, 
but  forced  upon  one  by  a  frank  and  empirical  investigation. 
It  is  plain  matter  of  fact,  they  tell  us,  that  every  part  or 
aspect  of  this  universe  is  interwoven  with  every  other.  Each 
is  so  dependent  upon  the  rest  that  it  cannot  be  understood 
without  that  rest.  This  is  true  at  once  of  facts  and  of  phil- 
osophical systems.  Consider,  for  instance,  some  fact:  the 
present  political  situation  in  the  United  States  of  America. 
It  obviously  could  not  be  fully  understood  without  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  history  of  Protestantism,  of  Roman  Catholicism, 
of  Roman  law,  of  Anglo-Saxon  law,  of  economic  history,  of 
the  Celtic,  Teutonic,  Scandinavian,  English  and  other  races 
—  and  so  on  indefinitely.  Or  take  a  less  complicated  in- 
stance. The  character  of  my  friend  A.  B.  —  could  it  be  com- 
prehended from  a  study  of  his  private  life  alone  ?  His 
character  is  to  be  described  by  what  he  does;  and  what  he 
does  reaches  far  beyond  himself.  If  he  starts  a  revolution 
leading  to  the  birth  of  a  new  sect,  party  or  nation,  where  is 
the  limit  of  his  personality  ?  Or  can  I  explain  his  nature 
without  a  knowledge  of  his  forbears  and  his  environment  ? 
But  we  need  not  confine  ourselves  to  human  examples. 
A  stone  is  dependent  on  so  much  of  the  rest  of  the  universe 
that  we  cannot  draw  a  line  beyond  which  that  dependence 
ceases.  Gravitation,  probably  ubiquitous,  ties  all  bodies 
together  by  an  unbreakable  cord.  Alter  the  position  of  a 
speck  of  dust,  and  you  have  altered,  however  slightly,  the 
position  of  every  other  body  in  the  universe.  How  many 
other  cases  might  we  not  add  ?  The  more  our  empirical 
knowledge  grows,  the  more  illustrations  we  discover  of  this 
interdependence.  Ponder  it,  and  the  weight  of  the  evidence 
grows  overwhelming.  It  becomes  as  hard  to  resist  the  im- 
pression of  a  great  organic  unity  in  things,  as  to  find  an 
event  without  a  cause.  Indeed,  we  believe  that,  on  the 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  327 

empirical  side  at  least,  the  cumulation  of  instances,  which 
modern  science  —  especially  biology  and  history  —  offers, 
is  the  prime  occasion  of  the  rationalistic  synthesis. 

Or  consider  the  mutual  dependence  of  the  partial  types  of 
philosophy.  Our  whole  treatment  of  them  should  have 
made  clear  that  each  involved  one  or  more  counterparts; 
for  each  fails  just  because  it  refuses  to  acknowledge  that 
counterpart.  Subjectivism  failed  because  it  could  not  give 
any  clew  to  the  facts  of  objectivity;  idealism  because  it 
refused  to  explain  the  real  detail  of  the  world;  voluntarism 
because  it  gave  no  place  to  the  claims  of  rationalism  and 
romanticism.  Determinism  likewise  would  have  given  a 
fair  map  of  reality  if  it  had  been  able  to  account  for  the 
actual  variations  and  irregularities  which  our  experience 
everywhere  meets.  Each  of  these  systems  would  have  been 
satisfactory,  could  it  have  generated  the  truths  which  its 
opposite  stood  for.  And  so  we  might  speak,  it  would  seem, 
of  every  possible  partisan  view.  Does  not  this  mean  that  in 
truth  each  of  them  implies  that  other  half  of  the  universe 
which  it  fails  to  notice  ?  Does  not  the  very  fact  that  the 
perennial  controversy  between  the  factions  is  due  to  their 
exclusiveness  suggest  that  the  quarrel  could  cease  only  if 
each  side  implicitly  included  the  other  ?  And  must  we  not 
conclude  that  each  category  which  serves  as  the  basis  of 
such  a  partisan  view  implies  the  rest  of  the  universe  ?  Every 
partial  system  is  but  the  glorification  of  a  certain  special 
category;  and  if  that  system  truly  involves  a  counter-sys- 
tem, then  each  category  involves  the  counter-category.  The 
dialectic  of  the  historical  systems  is  but  the  dialectic  of  the 
categories,  and  Hegel  in  his  deduction  of  categories  has  given 
the  deduction  of  the  philosophic  types. 

Of  course,  science  has  never  said  its  last  word,  and  it  could 
never  have  proved  that  all  there  is  about  every  least  speck  is 


328  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

dependent  upon  all  else.  Let  the  impressiveness  be  as  great 
as  it  may,  we  know  in  our  hearts  that  universal  interdepend- 
ence is  not  empirically  demonstrated.  Gravitation  may  not 
be  ubiquitous,  my  friend's  character  might  contain  some 
truly  spontaneous  variations;  observation  gives  of  itself  no 
absolute  denial  of  these.  Still  less  do  we  know  that  one  kind 
of  dependence  carries  with  it  every  other  kind.  My  char- 
acter may  depend  upon  yours,  but  does  my  liking  for  red 
meat  depend  upon  your  dislike  of  pepper  ?  The  position  of 
the  earth  hangs  upon  the  position  of  Sirius,  but  does  the 
chemical  composition  of  the  former  depend  upon  the  chemi- 
cal composition  of  the  latter  ?  No :  these  have  not  been 
scientifically  established;  in  upholding  such  claims  the  syn- 
thetists,  like  all  philosophers,  go  beyond  experience.  Their 
belief  in  organic  unity  rests  upon  another,  if  you  will  a 
deeper,  source.  They  appeal  to  a  logical  postulate,  a  de- 
mand which,  they  urge,  it  would  be  irrational  to  deny, 
whose  denial  cuts  at  the  very  root  of  thought  itself.  Even 
if  we  have  not  seen  how  every  particular  in  the  universe  is 
tied  up  with  every  other,  we  are,  they  say,  justified  in  having 
a  faith  that  it  must  be  so.  For  the  description,  the  defini- 
tion, of  anything  is  never  in  terms  of  that  thing  alone,  but  in 
terms  of  its  relations  with  other  things;  yes,  even  if  those 
relations  amount  only  to  bare  distinction.  That  is  a  fun- 
damental trait  of  knowledge.  Things  are  to  be  understood 
only  in  their  connection  with  other  things.  And  if  to  under- 
stand a  thing  is  to  behold  the  very  essence  of  the  thing,  then 
the  very  essence  of  a  thing  is  its  connections  with  other 
things.  And  you  cannot  draw  a  line  where  this  connected- 
ness stops.  Hence  ultimately  everything  is  its  relations  to 
everything  else.  "  For  logic  at  all  events,  it  is  a  postulate 
that  the  truth  is  the  whole  "  (Bosanquet,  Logic,  2d  ed., 
I,  p.  a). 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  329 

The  appeal  here  is  not  to  practical  needs  or  to  an  aesthetic 
demand,  but  to  the  nature  of  thought,  of  intelligibility. 
And  that  is  why  we  have  characterized  the  type  as  a 
rationalistic  synthesis.  The  mortar  which  cements  the 
bricks  into  the  building  is  a  logical  one.  In  the  Thomistic 
system  we  shall  see  that  this  is  not  the  case.  And  it  is  neces- 
sary to  realize  this  logical  nature  of  our  present  view  in 
order  justly  to  estimate  it.  Much  of  the  persuasiveness  of 
writers  like  Bosanquet  is  due  to  the  empirical  illustrations 
of  dependence,  which,  with  the  skill  of  the  artist,  they  inter- 
weave in  the  metaphysical  structure;  yet  the  nerve  of  the 
argument  is  not  this  concrete  evidence,  but  the  postu  of  late 
rationality.  For  the  system  would  be  true  even  if  many 
things  did  not  show  material  interdependence.  Even  if 
gravitation,  say,  were  found  not  to  hold  within  intramo- 
lecular distances,  that  would  only  mean  that  a  motion  of 
atom  A  did  not  tend  to  effect  a  change  of  position  in  atom 
B.  The  ultimate  nature  of  A  would  still  involve  the  fact 
that  it  could  with  B  constitute  a  molecule  while  B  remained 
stationary  and  A  moved;  and  this  describes  A  by  its  rela- 
tion to  B.  Such  relationships,  formal  though  they  seem, 
would  be  real  enough,  and  would  bear  out  the  postulate  that 
everything  involved  its  environment.  The  absolutist 
admits,  indeed,  that  in  many  cases  the  connectedness  of 
things  is  hardly  traceable  in  concrete.  Says  Mr.  Bradley: 
"  I  believe  in  -a  word  in  the  implication  of  all  aspects  of 
reality  with  one  another.  But  once  more  I  cannot  believe 
that  we  can  see  this  implication  in  detail  "  (Essays  on  Truth 
and  Reality,  p.  123).  And  "Philosophy  in  my  judgment 
cannot  verify  its  principle  in  detail  and  throughout  .  .  . 
it  continues  still  to  rest  upon  faith  "  (op.  cit.,  p.  27). 

The  oft-repeated  statement  that  absolute  idealism  starts 
with  no  presuppositions  is  thus  both  true  and  false.    At  the 


33O  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

beginning,  to  be  sure,  no  axiom  is  laid  down  to  which  reality 
must  conform;  we  discover  by  "  an  ideal  experiment,"  i.  e., 
by  reflecting  upon  what  experience  offers  us,  that  mutual 
implication  pervades  reality.  This  universal  principle  is  not 
ante  rem  but  in  re.  Yet  it  is  of  logical  tissue  constituted, 
though  not  in  abstracto  developed,  and  its  alleged  application 
is  wider  than  the  range  of  our  experience.  It  is  distinct, 
though  not  separate,  from  that  which  it  binds.  We  cannot 
explore  without  a  light,  and  the  light  is  not  the  same  as  the 
material  which  it  illuminates.  It  is  of  a  different  blood  and 
of  an  authority  in  its  own  right,  and  is  in  this  sense  a  priori. 
But  of  course  it  would  not  be  visible  except  it  impinge  upon 
the  data  of  experience. 

We  must  however  guard  ourselves  against  the  belief  that 
this  principle  is  capable  of  an  a  priori  proof .  Thus:  deny  it 
and  you  find  you  have  already  implied  it.  There  is,  we  shall 
suppose,  no  dependence  of  A  upon  B.  Then  A  will  have  to 
be  defined  as  that  which  is  independent  of  B  —  which  is  to 
define  A  in  terms  of  its  relation  to  B  —  which  is  to  make  A 
depend  upon  B  to  express  its  full  nature.  But  the  argument 
assumes  the  principle  of  interaality  (cf.  Chapters  III  and 
VIII),  which  is  the  very  thing  to  be  proved.  We  do  not 
question  the  justice  of  that  assumption,  but  the  demon- 
strability  of  the  principle.  We  have  seen  in  previous  dis- 
cussions that  it  is  not  demonstrable;  it  is  a  postulate,  or 
object  of  faith  or  insight  —  whichever  you  wish. 

Yet  this  principle  is  not  the  whole  logical  guide  of  the 
system.  It  is  but  the  half.  If  it  were  the  whole,  the  system 
would  not  be  truly  synthetic.  The  counterpart  of  mutual 
dependence  is  independence;  to  the  principle  of  internal 
relations  is  opposed  that  of  external  relations.  Both  of  these 
must  be  recognized,  if  we  are  to  have  genuine  synthesis; 
neither  by  itself  is  final.  The  principle  of  internal  relations 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  331 

alone  would  give  us  relativity,  which  is  but  one  more  partial 
type,  and  is  subject  to  the  criticisms  we  have  made  upon  the 
other  partial  types.  For  absolutism,  however,  if  universal 
interdependence  is  true,  it  is  equally  true  that  everything  is 
itself  a  unique  point  of  reality,  a  single  and  valid  way  of 
viewing  the  whole,  not  reducible  to  any  other  point.  If  the 
principle  of  dependence  were  thfe  only  basis  of  the  system, 
each  fact  would  be  dissolved  into  its  environment  and  lose 
its  integrity.  The  counter-principle  is  needed,  that  each 
fact  is  what  it  is  immediately  and  directly  seen  to  be.  My 
friend  A.  B.  is  not  just  a  group  of  relations  to  the  world,  but  a 
real  being  in  himself.  Where  would  be  society  if  all  its  mem- 
bers were  nothing  but  their  relations  to  one  another?  There 
would  be  no  terms  to  sustain  the  relations.  Of  equal  im- 
portance with  the  logical  postulate  of  the  organic  unity, 
then,  is  that  other  logical  postulate  of  the  parts.  Each  is 
real.  The  particular  stones,  trees,  birds,  men,  planets  are 
all  real;  as  real  as  are  the  relations  which  knit  them  to- 
gether. "  Any  positive  attribution  ...  to  Reality  must 
be  right,"  says  Mr.  Bradley,  "  so  long  as  it  abstains  from  the 
denial,  implicit  or  explicit,  of  something  more  "  (Mind, 
1911,  p.  315). 

But  these  counterpart-principles  seem  to  contradict  each 
other.  If  an  object  A  is  the  same  as  its  relations  to  other 
things,  as  the  principle  of  internal  relations  asserts,  it  is  also 
different  from  those  relations,  for  it  is  something  positive 
and  concrete  in  itself.  Here  arises  the  famous  "  dialectic," 
whose  only  difficulty  lies  in  its  extreme  simplicity.  For  how 
can  two  things  which  are  the  same  be  different  ?  Call  the 
object  as  viewed  merely  by  itself,  A ;  call  the  total  of  its 
relations  to  other  objects,  X]  then  A  and  X  are  and  con- 
stitute one  and  the  same  thing,  that  particular  object,  while 
yet  they  are  quite  distinct.  Common  sense  sees  no  difficulty 


332  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

in  this,  for  common  sense  is  sophisticated  by  the  needs  of 
practice  and  of  science;  it  says  that  nothing  is  easier,  point- 
ing us  to  one  case  after  another  of  sameness-in-difference; 
the  same  piece  of  paper  in  two  places  successively,  the  same 
colour  in  two  oranges,  etc.  But  absolute  idealism,  with 
childlike  directness,  retorts  that  this  explains  nothing.  One 
still  does  not  understand  how  two  entities  that  are  different 
can  yet  be  the  same.  For  if  they  are  different,  the  one  is  not 
the  other;  if  they  are  the  same,  the  one  is  the  other  —  and 
that  gives  unalloyed  contradiction.  Contradiction  "  con- 
sists in  '  differents  '  being  ascribed  to  the  same  term,  while 
no  distinction  is  alleged  within  that  term  such  as  to  make  it 
capable  of  receiving  them "  (Bosanquet,  Principles  of 
Individuality  and  Value,  p.  224). 

Into  the  merits  of  the  dialectic  we  do  not  yet  enter. 
Enough  that  it  is  conceived  as  a  logical  instrument,  not  an 
aesthetic  or  practical  one.  It  is  used  to  show  that  the  objects 
in  the  world  are  not  truly  understood  when  they  are  repre- 
sented as  a  system  of  terms  in  relations.  True  thought,  or 
as  Hegel  called  it,  Reason,  must  solve  the  contradiction;  it 
must  see  the  universe  as  a  great  organism  in  which  the 
union  of  parts  is  so  intimate  as  to  pass  beyond  the  relational 
scheme.  Yet  this  intimacy  does  not  preclude  distinctness 
of  the  parts.  Ordinary  thought  isolates  its  objects  and 
dwells  in  abstractions,  and  it  cannot  see  how  the  many  may 
be  one,  the  different  terms  identical;  true  thought  would 
enable  us  to  see  the  unity-in-difference  of  the  concrete 
whole,  which  alone  is.  Mr.  Bradley,  who  accepts  a  nar- 
rower definition  of  thought,  regards  this  higher  insight  as 
above  the  intellect;  Mr.  Bosanquet,  like  Hegel,  defines 
thought  in  a  broader  fashion  and  considers  it  as  the  organon 
of  reality.  (Cf.  Bosanquet's  Logic,  2d  ed.,  II,  pp.  292, 
293.)  But  for  all  three,  the  motive  which  leads  to,  even  if  it 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  333 

does  not  consummate,  the  discovery  of  this  absolute  whole, 
is  a  logical  one.  And  the  two  later  Hegelians  agree  that  this 
vision  cannot  be  made  articulate  or  explained  in  detail.  We 
have  analogies  for  it,  as  we  have  for  the  fourth  dimension. 
In  feeling  of  a  cube  with  my  hand  touching  all  its  sides  I 
get  a  sense  of  the  many  faces  and  of  their  unity  in  one  object. 
And  we  may  conceive  a  vision  of  this  sort  which  would  em- 
brace the  universe  in  one  such  immediate  group.  This 
"  higher  synthesis  "  or  "  higher  immediacy  "  would  re- 
semble the  lower  immediacy  of  sense,  but  would  contain 
also  the  distinctions  discovered  by  analytic  thought.  Yet 
it  is  only  analogically  that  we  may  speak  here.  This  whole 
is  not  given  to  us  nor  explicable  in  detail.  Mr.  Bradley's 
mode  of  argument  for  it  in  his  main  work,  Appearance  and 
Reality,  is  significant.  He  shows  that  it  can  be,  and  that  it 
must  be,  and  therefore  that  it  is.  He  does  not  straightway 
show  us  that  it  is.  He  could  not  do  so,  for  the  Absolute  is 
approached  indirectly  and  by  a  logical  postulate. 

We  are  not  here  impugning  the  truth  of  the  system,  but 
seeking  to  characterize  it.  And  the  same  rationalistic 
quality  is  revealed  from  another  side.  The  present  syn- 
thesis is  idealistic,  and  its  idealism,  true  to  the  original  intent 
of  Hegel,  has  always  been  predominantly  logical.  For  the 
proof  of  idealism  which  the  system  offers  is  the  proof  of  an 
all-inclusive  Knower;  it  is  not  a  proof  of  an  all-inclusive 
desire,  or  emotion,  or  will.  Not  that  his  will  and  his  feeling 
are  reduced  to  a  kind  of  knowing,  as  was  the  case  in  Great 
Subjectivism.  Great  Subjectivism  is  not  a  true  synthesis 
and  does  not  place  all  aspects  of  personality  on  a  par.  The 
present  view  is  no  asymmetrical  one.  "  We  are  hence  mis- 
taken," says  Mr.  Bradley,  "  when  we  attempt  to  set  up  any 
one  aspect  of  our  nature  as  supreme,  and  to  regard  the  other 
aspects  merely  as  conducive  and  as  subject  to  its  rule  " 


334  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

(Essays,  p.  3).  The  present  type,  however,  finds  that  the 
logical  aspect  of  the  Absolute  is  the  aspect  which  gives  him 
his  title  of  all-inclusive  spirit.  The  argument  for  his  reality 
is  that  the  universe  must  logically  be  a  many-in-one, 
whereas  the  only  thing  that  can  be  a  many-in-one  is  a  mind. 
For  a  mind,  as  we  saw  in  the  last  chapter,  can  unite  the 
temporally  and  spatially  distinct  in  one  present  content. 
Matter,  for  instance,  cannot  display  a  genuine  unity-in- 
difference: two  particles  are  not  capable  of  being  the  same 
particle.  So  of  spaces,  or  times,  or  indeed  of  anything  but 
mind.  This  argument  for  idealism  is  the  exclusive  property 
of  the  rationalistic  synthesis.  It  has  been,  so  far  as  we  know, 
overlooked  by  realistic  opponents,  and  is  quite  foreign  to 
subjectivism.  The  whole  is  a  cognitive  mind  just  because 
it  is  a  synthesis.  "  The  '  driving  force  of  Idealism,'  as  I 
understand  it,  is  not  furnished  by  the  question  how  mind 
and  reality  can  meet  in  knowledge,  but  by  the  theory  of 
logical  stability,  which  makes  it  plain  that  nothing  can 
fulfil  the  conditions  of  self-existence  except  by  possessing 
the  unity  which  belongs  only  to  mind  "  (Bosanquet,  Logic, 
2d  ed.,  II,  p.  322). 

Now  the  course  of  our  reasoning  has  tended  to  show  that 
the  above  is,  at  all  events  in  the  main,  a  true  account  of 
reality.  As  we  went  through  the  partial  types,  we  found 
that  they  were,  so  far  as  they  were  positive  and  not  exclu- 
sive, sound  enough.  The  principle  of  internal  relations  we 
had  to  accept;  the  principle  of  external  relations  also.  That 
the  real  world  must  be  consistent,  must  be  able  to  adjust 
these  two  principles  harmoniously,  offers  no  strain  upon 
one's  credulity.  Yet  we  find  that  the  system  is  rejected,  not 
only  by  devotees  of  the  partial  types,  but  by  other  devotees 
(e.  g.,  Thomists)  who  nevertheless  adopt  the  motive  of 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  335 

synthesis.  How  comes  this  to  be  so  ?  Is  it  their  narrowness, 
or  can  we  find  some  excuse  for  them  ? 

Let  us  examine  carefully  the  character  of  the  whole,  or 
Absolute;  both  in  itself  and  in  its  relations  to  the  parts. 

First  notice  that  absolute  idealism  is  not  absolute  mon- 
ism, but  dualistic  monism.  This  is  a  consequence  of  the 
fact  that  it  is  built  upon  two  principles:  the  externality  and 
the  internality  of  relations.  The  whole  is,  and  ultimately 
the  whole  alone  is;  but  there  is  something  besides  what  is 
ultimate.  There  is  the  world  of  appearance,  the  parts,  the 
elements  abstracted  out  by  thought,  and  to  some  degree 
given  to  our  experience  as  isolated.  And  the  appearances 
are  not  mere  illusion  or  negligible,  but  are  necessary  to  make 
up  the  sum  of  reality  in  the  whole.  They  are  in  their  own 
way  integral  and  real  in  themselves.  "  The  value  of  the 
Whole  is  not  separable  from  that  of  its  diverse  aspects,  and 
in  the  end  apart  from  any  one  of  them  it  is  reduced  to 
nothing  "  (Bradley,  Essays,  p.  68).  The  two  sides,  the 
Absolute  and  its  appearances,  are  essential,  and  neither  is 
aught  without  the  other.  A  pure  monism  would  be  a  nega- 
tive mysticism,  but  this  system  is  positive,  recognizing  all 
specific  particulars;  yes,  implying  them.  Critics  have 
sometimes  treated  the  doctrine  as  if  it  made  the  Absolute 
transcend  its  appearances;  but  the  relation  is  one  of  im- 
manence. "  And  when  I  hear,  for  instance,  that  in  the 
Absolute  all  personal  interests  are  destroyed,  I  think  I 
understand  on  the  contrary  how  this  is  the  only  way  and  the 
only  power  in  and  by  which  such  interests  are  really  safe  " 
(op.  tit.,  p.  249).  The  whole  is  not  a  destroyer  but  a  pre- 
server. "  No  finite  purpose  .  .  .  could  have  its  place  taken 
by  another  without  a  genuine  alteration  of  the  whole;  .  .  . 
the  whole  would  not  be  what  it  is  were  not  precisely  this 


336  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

finite  purpose  left  in  its  own  uniqueness  to  speak  precisely 
its  own  word.  .  .  .  You  are  in  God;  but  you  are  not  lost 
in  God."  (Royce,  The  World  and  the  Individual,  I,  p.  465.) 
"  I  hold  that  all  finite  consciousness,  just  as  it  is  in  us,  - 
ignorance,  striving,  defeat,  error,  temporality,  narrowness, 
—  is  all  present  from  the  Absolute  point  of  view  but  is  also  seen 
in  unity  with  the  solution  of  problems,  the  attainment  of  goals, 
the  overcoming  of  defeats  .  .  ."  (op.  cit.,  II,  p.  320).  "  Our 
sorrows  are  identically  God's  sorrows  "  (p.  408).  "  The 
Absolute  knows  all  that  we  know,  and  knows  it  just  as  we 
know  it  "  (ibid.}.  "  For  not  one  instant  can  we  suppose  our 
finite  experience  first  '  absorbed  '  or  '  transmuted  '  and 
then  reduced,  in  an  ineffable  fashion,  to  its  unity  in  the 
divine  life  "  (ibid.}.  Professor  Bosanquet  would  not  go 
quite  so  far  as  this,  though  adhering  to  the  preservation  of 
the  parts  in  some  sense:  "  Transmutation,  then,  must  be  the 
rule  in  the  complete  experience.  Everything  must  be  there, 
as  all  the  artist's  failures,  and  the  fact  of  failure  itself,  are 
there  in  his  success.  But  they  cannot  be  there  as  analyzed 
into  temporal  moments  and  yet  drawn  out  unchanged  into  a 
panorama  within  a  specious  present  of  an  immeasurable 
span  "  (Bosanquet,  Principles  of  Individuality  and  Value, 
p.  391).  At  any  rate,  the  Absolute  is  in  no  sense  exclusive 
of  the  particulars;  it  makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world 
to  them  and  they  to  it.  Neither  is  in  any  degree  without  the 
other;  and  to  this  extent,  both  are  of  equal  rank.  The 
partisan  types  seem  to  have  no  cause  of  quarrel,  for  the 
parts  are  fairly  admitted. 

But  the  duality  of  absolute  idealism  has  further  conse- 
quences. In  spite  of  assertions  to  the  contrary,  there  is  a 
certain  gulf  between  the  Absolute  and  its  appearances.  It 
is  admitted  that  we  who  live  in  the  parts  do  not  see  how  they 
are  combined  into  the  whole.  We  do  not  see  why  every  fact 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  337 

implies  every  other  fact.  The  Absolute  is  "  inscrutable  " 
and  it  is  inscrutable  because  the  mode  of  synthesis,  the 
logical  implication  which  binds  the  parts  together  while 
keeping  them  distinct,  is  not  clear  to  us.  We  believe  it  must 
be,  perhaps,  but  we  do  not  see  that  it  is  done.  With  this 
belief  one  need  not  quarrel;  it  is  not  the  truth  of  absolutism 
that  we  shall  deny,  but  its  sufficiency.  The  inability  to  see 
how  the  whole  is  made  up  means  that  the  system  cannot 
furnish  a  transition  from  the  parts  to  the  whole.  There  lies 
a  moat  which  our  understanding  cannot  bridge.  And  pre- 
cisely as  we  cannot  pass  from  the  parts  to  the  whole,  do  we 
fail  to  discern  the  nature  of  the  process  by  which  the  whole 
gives  off  the  parts,  generating  the  realm  of  appearance. 
Given  a  unity,  how  can  that  unity  ever  come  to  split  itself 
up,  to  give  rise  to  the  abstractions,  the  separations,  in  which 
we  live  and  move  and  think  ?  From  the  one  you  cannot 
explain  the  many,  as  from  the  many  you  cannot  derive  the 
one.  The  appearances  in  their  separation  really  appear,  and 
their  separate  appearance  is  a  fact  really  distinct  from  the 
whole  which  does  not  as  such  in  any  abstraction  appear,  but 
simply  is.  How  does  the  ultimate  reality  come  to  shatter 
itself  into  the  parts  which  appear  ?  The  way  downward  is 
no  clearer  than  the  way  upward.  This  is,  of  course,  but  the 
modern  way  of  putting  the  old  problem  of  evil.  If  God  is 
perfect,  how  can  he  give  birth  to  imperfect  creatures,  or  how 
can  they  aspire  to  union  with  Him  ? 

To  be  sure,  the  system  insists  that  we  must  not  thus 
separate  the  absolute  and  its  appearances.  Neither  side  of 
the  duality  would  be  what  it  is,  were  it  not  for  the  other; 
they  "  interpenetrate  "  and  "  fuse."  Our  answer  is  that  we 
wish  to  understand  the  matter:  and  we  cannot  see  how  they 
could  even  interpenetrate  unless  they  were  in  some  way 
distinct.  If  no  blank  monism,  then  duality;  and  if  duality, 


338  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

then,  in  spite  of  formal  declarations,  as  far  as  our  under- 
standing can  go,  we  have  mutual  indifference.  Only  the 
exercise  of  supreme  faith  can  assure  us  of  the  fusion.  And 
the  intellect,  of  all  things,  cannot  live  by  faith  alone.  It 
must  have  sight,  and  sight  is  denied  it.  Whole  and  parts  are 
not  specifically  shown  to  influence  each  other;  we  see  only 
their  indifference.  Philosophy  demonstrates  the  Absolute, 
and  science  demonstrates  the  particular  facts  of  the  world; 
and  each  is  in  its  detail  irrelevant  to  the  other.  "  Philosophy 
like  other  things  has  a  business  of  its  own,  and  like  other 
things  it  is  bound,  and  it  must  be  allowed,  to  go  about  its 
own  business  in  its  own  way.  Except  within  its  own  limits 
it  claims  no  supremacy  "  (Bradley,  Essays,  p.  15).  Yes, 
even  the  various  sciences  are  more  or  less  indifferent  to  one 
another.  "  And  hence  the  main  aspects  of  our  being  must 
be  allowed,  each  for  itself,  to  have  a  relative  independence 
.  .  .  every  aspect  within  its  own  realm  is  in  a  certain  sense 
supreme  and  is  justified  in  resisting  dictation  from  without  " 
p.  10).  What  then  has  become  of  the  reciprocal  implication 
of  the  parts  ?  Our  philosophy,  in  short,  does  not  so  far  as 
we  can  see  owe  anything  to  the  fact  that  light  is  an  electrical 
process  rather  than  a  corpuscular  one,  or  that  man  is  more 
akin  to  the  apes  than  to  the  reptiles;  nor  does  it  in  any  way 
contribute  to  explain  these  peculiarities.  And  similarly,  the 
well-being  of  the  Absolute  has  no  bearing  that  we  can  trace, 
upon  the  good  or  ill-fortune  of  the  human  race,  or  any  mem- 
ber thereof.  "  The  '  good  '  of  the  universe  must  be  such  as 
belongs  to  a  world  and  not  to  the  member  of  one  "  (Bosan- 
quet,  Principles  of  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  24.)  "  We 
are  .  .  .  not  fitted  to  be  absolute  ends  "  (p.  25). 

Indeed,  the  rationalistic  synthesis  does  not  deny  the  fis- 
sure we  have  been  speaking  of.  Not  only  is  the  understand- 
ing of  the  connection  between  the  two  sides  of  the  dualism 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  339 

impossible ;  it  is  frankly  declared  to  be  undesirable.  "  Those 
for  whom  philosophy  has  to  explain  everything,"  says  Mr. 
Bradley  when  summarizing  his  doctrine,  "  need  therefore 
not  trouble  themselves  with  my  views  "  (Essays,  p.  246). 
It  would  be  unworthy  to  seek  to  discover  from  philosophy 
the  answer  to  questions  of  human  welfare.  "  We  put  the 
whole  inquiry  in  a  wrong  perspective,  and  lose  its  truth  and 
its  significance,  if  we  make  some  special  form  of  human 
destiny  the  unspoken  interest  of  our  arguments;  if,  one 
might  say,  when  we  refer  to  the  Absolute  we  are  really 
thinking  of  Heaven.  We  should  not  expect  metaphysic  to 
predict  terrestrial  history;  and  still  less,  therefore,  that 
which  lies  beyond  the  grave  "  (Bosanquet,  op.  cit.,  p.  268). 
And  Professor  Royce  tells  us  that  "  the  demand  for  a  direct 
sign  from  heaven  is  not  the  abiding  expression,  either  of  the 
religious  or  of  the  philosophical  consciousness  "  (op.  cit.,  II, 
p.  6).  "  What  religion  practically  gives  to  the  faithful  is  not 
the  means  for  predicting  what  is  about  to  happen  to  them- 
selves, but  the  strength  to  endure  hardness  as  good  soldiers  " 
(ibid.).  "  Religious  faith  involves  no  direct  access  to  the 
special  counsels  of  God  "  (ibid.).  And  again  "  Philosophy  is 
as  unable  to  formulate  a  thesis  in  the  realms  properly  be- 
longing to  physics  or  to  biology  as  it  is  to  build  a  steam- 
engine  "  (p.  7).  And  there  is  a  certain  nobility  about  these 
utterances.  They  declare  the  dignity  of  philosophy,  its 
austerity,  its  aloofness  from  the  vulgar.  The  head  of  the 
house  cannot  be  expected  to  sweep  his  own  doorstep.  Yet, 
if  we  seek  analogies,  the  captain  of  a  ship  must  have  gone 
through  the  training  of  the  foremast  hand.  For  that  matter, 
philosophy  is  not  held  to  be  quite  indifferent  to  human  weak- 
ness; the  faith  in  God  should  give  us  "  strength  to  endure 
hardness  as  good  soldiers  "  and  contemplation  of  the  Abso- 
lute restores  one's  faith.  But  it  does  not  justify  the  partic- 


340  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

ular  pursuits  or  guarantee  the  particular  ends,  any  more 
than  it  accounts  for  the  specific  detail  of  reality. 

The  trouble  is  that  absolutism  has  set  a  problem  which  it 
cannot  solve.  If  it  were  a  mere  blank  monism,  it  would  not 
do  so;  but  it  is  dualistic,  offering  both  whole  and  parts,  and 
asserting  that  they  imply  each  other,  while  yet  unable  to 
explain  how.  Or  if  it  had  these  two  aspects  side  by  side  and 
indifferent  to  each  other,  then  too  there  would  be  no  un- 
solved problem.  But  it  insists  that  they  are  not  indifferent; 
each  involves  and  is  the  other.  Now,  to  affirm  that  a  certain 
thing  is  so  and  to  announce  in  the  same  breath  that  we  can 
never  see  how  it  is  so,  is  to  offer  to  intellect  the  cup  of  Tan- 
talus. Doubtless  it  is  a  noble  exercise  of  faith  to  retain  our 
belief  in  the  synthetic  unity;  but,  resolve  as  we  may,  faith 
cannot  endure  without  some  support  from  sight.  Hope 
deferred  maketh  the  heart  sick ;  and  it  is  not  just  our  human 
weakness,  but  the  system's  refusal  to  answer  the  legitimate 
call  of  the  universal  for  its  counterpart,  the  specific,  that 
must  sooner  or  later  lead  to  a  revolt.  In  the  absolutist's 
point  of  view,  the  philosopher  is  one  whose  intellectual  life 
is  forever  work,  with  no  rest.  Of  course  we  are  told  that  we 
ought  not  to  wish  for  specific  explanation.  By  what  author- 
ity ?  Who  can  dictate  to  the  fundamental  passions  ?  That 
is  but  an  attempt  to  sanction  the  incapacity  of  the  system. 
We  do  want  to  connect  the  parts  in  detail  and  to  see  how 
they  are  interwoven  to  make  up  the  whole,  and  nothing  can 
erase  that  want.  We  do  want  to  see  how  the  whole  comes  to 
have  just  these  particular  parts  that  it  has.  We  do  require 
that  the  light  of  heaven  be  used  to  illuminate  the  detail  of 
objects  upon  earth. 

The  system  itself  may  be  admitted  to  be  true.  Many  of 
the  accusations  which  are  today  hurled  against  it  —  that 
the  Absolute  is  static,  transcendent,  abstract,  etc.  —  are,  we 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  34! 

believe,  due  to  lack  of  comprehension.  The  concept  of  the 
Absolute  is  perhaps  the  most  positive  which  it  has  entered 
into  the  mind  of  man  to  conceive.  It  is  as  dynamic  as  time 
itself,  for  it  includes  all  time.  But  it  is  not  fertile.  It  claims 
to  synthesize,  by  force  of  logic,  the  parts  of  the  world;  yet 
when  we  would  see  the  detailed  process  of  the  synthesis,  we 
are  told  that  we  ought,  as  philosophers,  to  be  indifferent  to 
the  details.  How  can  we  be  content  with  such  indifference 
when  we  know  that  the  reality  which  we  seek  to  understand 
is  not  indifferent  to  them  ?  The  absolutists  would  simply 
quench  our  desires  because  they  have  no  means  of  satisfying 
them. 

Since  the  reality  of  the  whole  gives  no  clew  to  the  more  or 
less  independent  parts,  absolutism  meets  here  a  critical 
point.  It  is  unable,  on  its  principle  that  the  whole  is  real, 
to  do  justice  to  the  real  appearance  of  the  parts,  as  they 
come  to  our  experience  in  relative  isolation.  Now  the  parti- 
san systems,  as  we  saw,  are  based  upon  the  apotheosis  of  one 
or  another  of  these  parts.  It  follows  that  absolutism  does 
not  truly  include  those  systems;  their  edges  fall  within  its 
circle,  but  their  centres  lie  outside.  Absolutism  admits  that 
the  parts  are  as  such  real,  but  it  always  adds  that  the  part 
in  its  isolation  is  not  actual,  the  abstract  not  real.  Hence  it 
does  not  grant  the  one  point  which  each  partial  type  con- 
tends for,  viz.,  that  its  own  basis  is  real,  by  and  for  itself 
alone,  and  not  by  virtue  of  its  connection  with  something 
else.  Absolutism,  of  course,  could  not  grant  this:  it  has  no 
genuine  appreciation  of  the  motive  of  independence.  In  a 
formal  manner  it  grants  the  thing  but  it  does  not  grant  it  in 
the  way  in  which  the  partisan  demands  it — as  self-sufficient. 
Accordingly,  we  may  say  that  the  critical  point  of  the  pres- 
ent system  is  the  detail,  the  parts.  It  cannot  account  for 
their  appearance  as  fragments.  The  partisan,  indignant  at 


342  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

being  nominally  included  but  really  denied,  is  bound  to 
revolt  from  the  synthetic  point  of  view.  Or,  if  he  still 
reveres  the  largeness  of  its  ideal,  he  will  protest  at  the  inade- 
quacy of  the  logical  type  of  synthesis,  and  seek  another.  If 
he  chooses  the  first  alternative  and  goes  back  to  some  one  of 
the  earlier  types,  an  interminable  seesaw  threatens  between 
the  part-motive  and  the  whole-motive.  If,  seeing  the 
fatality  of  this,  he  chooses  the  second  alternative,  he  pro- 
ceeds to  such  a  form  of  synthesis,  probably,  as  we  shall  take 
up  in  the  next  chapter.  But  in  any  case  the  claim  of  absolut- 
ism to  be  a  final,  satisfactory  answer  to  the  philosophic 
question,  is  seen  to  be  specious. 

The  above  critical  point  may  be  called  the  external  one; 
there  is  a  second,  which  we  may  designate  internal  to  the 
type.  Absolutism  makes  much  of  the  dialectic.  It  finds  that 
the  part-types,  and  the  particular  facts  of  reality,  contain 
ruinous  contradictions.  In  subjectivism,  for  instance:  the 
reduction  of  the  object  to  a  phase  of  the  subject  is  alleged  to 
contradict  the  self-existence  of  the  object.  And  of  any  fact 
it  appears  that  to  identify  it  with  its  relations  contradicts 
its  own  self-sufficient  reality.  The  axiom  of  internal  rela- 
tions conflicts  with  the  axiom  of  external  relations.  As  has 
been  pointed  out,  there  is  an  endless  tilt  between  the  two  — 
so  far  as  yet  seen  they  can  never,  by  our  reason,  be  har- 
monized. All  the  endless  tilts  which  have  been  brought  to 
our  notice  are  but  manifestations  of  this  same  dialectic,  this 
opposition  never  peacefully  adjusted.  Now  the  synthetic 
type  claims  to  be  the  only  one  able  to  effect  the  adjustment. 
It  would  do  so  by  declaring  that  each  part-type  implies  its 
opposite,  each  particular  fact  its  environment.  It  thus 
appears  to  remove  the  exclusion  which  made  each  conflict 
with  the  other.  But  we  have  tried  to  show  that  the  syn- 
thesis was  never  made  plain  in  concrete.  That  every  fact 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  343 

does  imply  its  environment  was  not,  in  general,  proved. 
Certain  obvious  instances,  taken  from  social  life  and  gravi- 
tation, have  been  brought  forward ;  but  the  mutual  implica- 
tion was  never  shown  to  be  universal.  How  the  white  paper 
before  me  implies  the  orbit  of  Saturn,  for  example,  has  not 
been  made  clear  —  and  by  the  candid  admission  of  Mr. 
Bradley,  cannot  be  made  clear.  Consequently,  we  must 
confess  that  the  synthesis  which  should  unite  the  dialectical 
opposites  cannot  be  made  clear.  The  principle  of  internal 
relations  cannot  be  shown  consistent  with  that  of  external 
relations.  Having  once  affirmed  that  the  sameness  of  sub- 
ject and  predicate  contradicts  their  difference,  the  absolutist 
cannot  show  how  to  supersede  the  contradiction.  He  simply 
asserts  that  it  must  be  done,  suggesting  such  analogies  as 
the  unity  of  immediate  feeling,  etc.  But  in  all  honesty  he  is 
bound  to  acknowledge  that  we  cannot  understand  how  the 
subject  involves  the  predicate  without  losing  its  own  iden- 
tity. He  is  driven  to  say,  as  Mr.  Bradley  says,  that  thought 
is  incapable  by  itself  of  attaining  reality.  Or  if,  with  Hegel 
and  Mr.  Bosanquet,  he  believes  that  thought  can  attain 
reality,  then  he  is  no  better  off,  for  he  cannot  make  clear  to 
our  thought  how  thought  does  it.  The  dialectic  is  not  intel- 
ligibly overcome.  It  is  an  internal  knot  in  the  system  which 
the  system  cannot  untie,  a  kink  which  threatens  to  break  its 
wire;  an  internal  critical  point  which  we  can  formally  but 
not  effectively  pass.  Formally,  because  we  may  insist  that 
the  dialectic  is  solved  by  reality  itself  —  must  indeed  so 
insist;  but  this  is  a  promise  which  is  never  materialized. 
The  thing  is  never,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  accomplished.  Seen 
from  this  point  of  view,  absolutism  is  confronted  by  a  new 
opposite,  skepticism;  for  the  breakdown  of  faith  is  immi- 
nent when  it  is  never  rewarded  with  sight.  In  this  ironic 
fashion  does  the  Hegelian  dialectic  apply  to  the  Hegelian 


344  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

system  itself.  The  claim  of  finality  is  replaced  by  the  claim 
of  despair.  If  we  thought  to  know  everything  in  all  its 
rounded  completeness,  we  now  find  that  we  know,  and  can 
know,  nothing.  And  all  this,  because  we  could  not  solve  the 
dialectic.  The  disease  of  philosophy  reappears  as  before  and 
the  system  plays  into  the  hands  of  its  opponents. 

But  to  absolutism  belongs  the  credit  of  having  made  the 
disease  explicit.  Mysticism  also  did  this;  but  mysticism  at 
once  dodged  the  issue.  It  did  not  try  to  solve  the  contradic- 
tions; it  ran  away  from  them.  The  rational  synthesis  is 
more  manly;  it  tried  to  make  clear  the  mode  of  solution.  It 
failed,  yes:  but  it  recognized,  as  no  other  system  had  yet 
done,  the  necessity  of  grappling  directly  with  the  malady.  It 
saw  that  the  solution  of  the  antinomies  is  the  adjustment  of 
the  age-long  disagreements  of  all  the  philosophic  types;  that 
in  no  other  way  could  the  perennial  strife  be  stilled.  Hence- 
forth philosophy  must  seek  a  point  of  view  which  will  show 
clearly  and  specifically  how  one  aspect  of  reality  can  be 
peacefully  fused  with  its  counter-aspect. 

At  this  point  the  following  reflections  naturally  arise. 
Having  failed  to  find  a  logical  cement  for  the  construction  of 
the  synthesis,  why  not  seek  another  kind  ?  Perhaps  the 
mistake  of  the  rational  type  of  synthesis  was  due  to  its 
starting  from  a  general  postulate;  for  the  particulars  must 
ever  be  a  critical  point  to  the  universal.  Let  us  then  make  a 
new  start;  and  this  time  from  the  side  of  the  particulars. 
The  way  in  which  one  particular  leads  to  another  will  now 
be  not  the  un verifiable  one  of  rational  implication,  but  the 
verifiable  ones  which  are  furnished  by  the  concrete  expe- 
rience of  life.  No  aspirations  after  the  ideals  of  logic,  un- 
revealed  in  fact,  will  be  our  guide;  rather  the  dry  facts  of 
daily  life  and  common  experience.  In  short,  let  us  adopt 
not  a  theoretical  but  a  practical  point  of  view.  Perhaps  the 


THE  RATIONALISTIC  SYNTHESIS  345 

practical  categories  will  suggest  to  us  an  understanding  of 
the  way  in  which  opposites,  counterparts,  indeed  all  facts, 
are  combined  into  a  perfect  whole.  Such  a  synthesis  we  find 
in  the  official  philosophy  of  Roman  Catholicism:  a  blend, 
in  the  main,  of  the  system  of  the  practical  and  empirical 
Aristotle  with  the  Roman  genius  of  organization. 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM 


way  upon  which  philosophy  here  enters  is  one  to 
JL  which  about  half  the  professional  thinkers  of  today  — 
the  Protestant  half  —  pay  scant  attention.  Yet  we  shall 
show  that  it  is,  in  a  rudimentary  form  at  least,  commonly 
traversed  —  as  commonly,  perhaps,  and  as  unconsciously, 
as  the  ether  through  which  the  earth  passes.  But  it  is  not 
an  outgrowth  of  science,  or  of  reflection  upon  science;  and 
in  a  scientific  age  like  the  present,  the  vivid  hues  of  ration- 
alism and  empiricism  obscure  its  prosaic  colours  and  we  do 
not  realize  that  we  are  using  it.  To  understand  its  claims, 
to  estimate  impartially  their  validity,  is  no  easy  task  for  the 
Protestant  who  prides  himself  on  the  independence  and  self- 
sufficiency  of  his  thought.  Nevertheless,  a  humbler  attitude 
on  his  part  might  enable  him  to  learn  something  new;  for 
in  despising  the  Catholic  position  he  misses  large  areas  of 
human  experience. 

The  platform  from  which  we  are  now  to  view  the  world  is 
so  different  from  those  hitherto  occupied,  that  it  seems  at 
first  view  hostile  to  the  just  demands  of  intellect,  yes,  even  a 
remnant  of  superstition.  Such  is  the  usual  Protestant  belief 
about  it;  and  if  we  would  correct  the  error,  it  is  necessary 
to  go  back  to  fundamentals.  Let  us  then  begin  by  recalling 
some  of  the  motives  which  lead  to  the  synthetic  attitude. 

Some  day  we  learn,  if  our  eyes  are  open,  that  there  are 
more  things  in  heaven  and  earth  than  are  dreamt  of  in  our 
philosophy.  The  words  of  the  poet  might  be  uttered  by  a 
partisan  type,  repenting  of  its  narrowness.  The  world  is  too 

346 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       347 

large  to  be  comprehended  under  one  formula.  The  sub- 
jective idealist  at  length  sees  that  the  term  "  human  mind  " 
affords  no  clew  to  the  understanding  of  Nature.  The 
materialist  discovers  that  radio-activity  and  the  electrons 
give  no  prospect  of  accounting  for  the  laws  of  consciousness. 
The  nominalist  comes  to  acknowledge  that  if  everything 
actual  is  individual,  it  is  impossible  to  explain  the  uniformi- 
ties in  the  world.  And  thus,  we  may  imagine,  every  partisan 
realizes  that  the  true  system  will  be  one  which  combines  all 
the  factions;  for  nothing  else  can  be  adequate  to  the  wealth 
of  reality. 

But  the  synthesis  must  go  further.  The  parts  which  form 
this  stupendous  whole  are  together.  They  are  more  or  less 
interlaced;  they  often  act  upon  one  another;  many  of  them 
betray,  in  their  very  make-up,  the  presence  of  their  fellows. 
The  ocean's  tides  show  the  pull  of  the  moon,  and  the  policy 
of  the  United  States  to  Japan  indicates  the  policy  of  Japan 
to  the  United  States.  How  far  this  mutual  implication 
reaches,  experience  does  not  reveal;  certainly  the  inter- 
penetration  of  all  things,  after  the  Hegelian  manner,  has 
not  been  verified.  Yet  though  we  find  no  clinching  proof  of 
this  interpenetration,  we  cannot  wholly  strangle  a  belief 
that  there  is  some  real  bond  between  all  the  parts.  The 
monistic  impulse,  defeated  in  the  Hegelian  campaign,  still 
agitates  our  thought.  "  If  we  could  but  find  the  right  point 
of  departure,"  it  urges,  "  we  should  discover  the  linkage. 
Logic,  science,  reason,  it  must  be  admitted,  have  not  been 
able  to  find  it.  The  principle  of  internal  relations  is  in 
many  cases  but  a  formality.  But  the  intellectual  point  of 
view  is  not  the  only  one.  The  scientific  mood  has  weight; 
and  you,  living  in  a  scientific  age,  are  so  awed  by  it  that  you 
dare  not  whisper  of  any  sanctions  but  those  of  reason.  But 
man  has  entirely  different  moods,  when  considerations  of 


348  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

practice  and  of  value  hold  sway.  Man  is  more  than  a 
thinker,  he  is  a  doer.  And  the  practical  moods  are  in  fact 
more  frequent,  and  even  more  dominating;  yes,  they  give 
more  insight  into  life."  We  learn  best  about  the  world  by 
living  in  it.  To  take  hold  of  the  lever  and  run  the  engine  is 
to  know  it  better  than  by  the  contemplation  of  a  blue-print. 
To  deal  with  men  in  buying,  selling,  organizing,  teaching,  is 
to  understand  men  better  than  by  psychologizing.  The 
difference  between  the  scientific  and  practical  moods  is  the 
difference  between  theoretical  knowledge  and  wisdom.  The 
man  of  practical  wisdom  will  perchance  discover  connec- 
tions in  this  universe  which  disinterested  observation  or 
calculation  in  their  aloofness  are  unable  to  discern. 

Let  us  then  see  how  a  practical  attitude  might  find  some 
ground  for  uniting  the  parts  into  a  whole,  which  the  ra- 
tionalist has  overlooked. 

Make  the  practical  attitude  thoroughgoing.  Conceive 
the  world  as  a  theatre,  wherein  a  drama  of  persons  is  being 
enacted;  not  as  a  "  complex  "  of  sequences  and  coexistences, 
but  an  arena.  Abandon  the  third-person  view;  consider  the 
world  in  the  light  of  the  first  and  second.  Struggles,  con- 
summations, goods  sought,  attained,  prevented,  thwarted 
by  evils,  overcome  and  overcoming :  these  will  be  the  central 
events  of  the  universe,  and  the  nature  of  every  fact  will  be 
estimated  by  the  part  it  plays  in  such  a  drama.  The  cate- 
gories which  we  must  needs  use  in  order  to  successful  dealing 
with  men  and  things  —  these  are  the  true  ones.  Even  if  we 
do  not  understand  the  raison  d'etre  of  these  categories,  they 
are  to  be  accepted.  Good  judgment,  sound  common  sense, 
are  more  fruitful  guides  than  science.  For  instance:  a  rigid 
determinism  cannot  be  true,  because  in  our  intercourse  with 
men  we  have  to  treat  them,  to  a  certain  extent,  as  free 
beings.  Also,  causality  will  be  in  its  own  province  meta- 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  — THOMISM       349 

physically  ultimate,  since  we  adapt  ourselves  to  nature  only 
by  predicting  effects.  Science,  as  Hume  showed,  is  unable 
logically  to  derive  effect  from  cause;  but  practice  sees 
nevertheless  that  the  connection  is  a  necessary  one.  So, 
too,  of  our  belief  in  the  external  world.  It  is  impossible 
scientifically  to  prove,  from  the  subjective  phenomena,  that 
there  is  a  real  external  world.  There  is  no  logical  link  con- 
necting subjective  and  objective  realms.  But  practically 
one  must  assume  the  reality  of  both.  To  common  sense  it  is 
evident  enough  that  our  states  of  mind  are  directed  upon  an 
outer  reality.  And  so,  in  general,  we  may  say  that  a  practi- 
cal attitude  sees  that  one  side  of  life  should  be  supplemented 
by  another  because  both  are  needed,  for  working  purposes, 
for  the  f idlest  realization  of  life.  They  minister  to  the  drama. 
The  platform  has,  perhaps,  but  one  plank;  but  it  is  a  very 
solid  one,  for  a  tremendous  structure  will  be  found  resting 
thereon.  That  plank  is  the  principle,  that  whatever  min- 
isters deeply,  or  indispensably,  to  life,  is  to  be  believed  real. 
At  once  the  reader  will  say  "  But  this  is  pragmatism  over 
again!  "  No:  it  differs  profoundly  from  that  view.  Or,  to 
avoid  a  verbal  quarrel,  let  us  say  that  it  differs  from  the 
view  which  above  we  expounded  under  the  name  pragma- 
tism. The  main  difference  is  that  pragmatism  is  wholly  a 
scientific  position,  while  this  is  not.  Pragmatism  taking  its 
cue  from  biology,  considers  the  true  to  be  the  hypothesis 
which  is  found  to  cohere  with  the  rest  of  our  experience.  By 
acting  upon  the  hypothesis  we  test  this  coherence;  and  its 
truth  cannot  be  assumed  until  the  test  has  been  made.  The 
method  is  through  and  through  experimental.  But  our 
type  is  not  one  of  trial-and-error.  It  does  not  wait  for 
decision  by  results;  it  does  not  hold  its  decisions  subject  to 
revision.  It  has  none  of  that  hatred  of  absolutism  and 
dogmatism  with  which  pragmatism  burns.  On  the  contrary, 


350  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

it  is  rather  dogmatic;  it  considers  its  doctrines  to  be  ulti- 
mate. The  practical  animus  of  common  sense  justifies  its 
own  dogmatic  certainty.  Certainty  must  not  be  delayed 
until  such  time  as  we  can  test  its  coherence;  for  in  coping 
with  the  emergencies  of  life  we  need  knowledge  at  once. 
Indecision  means  inaction;  but  action  is  necessary  to  our 
continued  existence.  In  short,  our  present  view  believes 
that  the  practical  attitude  has  in  itself  an  immediate  means 
of  discovering  final  truth;  it  claims  to  possess  a  distinct 
organ  of  truth,  as  eye  is  distinct  from  touch.  And  as  we  see 
beyond  the  limits  of  touch,  so  this  attitude  will  learn  what 
it  is  beyond  experimental  science  to  ascertain.  Other  dif- 
ferences there  are,  consequent  upon  this  one;  they  will 
appear  in  the  sequel.  But  the  above  is,  we  believe,  the 
crucial  distinction  between  it  and  pragmatism. 

When  we  speak  of  a  distinct  organ  of  truth  we  do  not 
mean  a  kind  of  mystical  insight,  contemning  reason.  The 
devotees  of  practical  synthesis  use  reason ;  historically,  none 
have  used  it  more  than  they.  But  they  use  it  to  subserve 
always  the  demands  of  practice.  Reason  renders  articulate 
and  applicable  to  life  what  the  practical  attitude  vouch- 
safes to  it ;  it  is,  in  fact,  indispensable  to  a  well-ordered  life. 
But  it  is  secondary  rather  than  primary:  it  is  to  be  trusted 
because  it  is  one  of  our  normal  faculties.  No  scientific 
scheme  underlies  the  practical  philosophy,  as  biology  under- 
lies pragmatism,  or  the  transcendental  argument  underlies 
idealism. 

The  general  principle  is  that  the  wise  philosopher  will  be 
just  to  all  interests,  so  far  as  without  inconsistency  he  may. 
And  consistency  is  respected,  of  course,  for  good  practical 
reasons.  Life  is  broad,  and  one  who  lives  it  best  must  adapt 
himself  to  all  sides  of  it.  We  may  almost  understand  why 
this  motto  of  one  who  fares  forth  in  the  world  has  become 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       351 

well-nigh  extinct  among  non-Catholic  philosophers;  for,  as 
we  have  so  often  found,  their  philosophy  has  tended  to  glory 
in  its  separation  from  the  concrete  details  of  life.  But  the 
sojourner  through  this  vale  of  tears,  when  he  turns  phi- 
losopher, has  a  distinct  message;  and  we  may  expect  that 
sooner  or  later  the  non-religious  thinker  will  rediscover  it. 
For  it  has  a  positive  content  all  its  own.  It  is  not  to  be  ex- 
plained away  as  using  a  lesser  degree  of  reason,  but  to  be 
distinguished  as  showing  a  greater  degree  of  good  judgment. 

This  counsel  of  prudence,  so  vague,  so  willing  to  embrace 
all  as  to  seem  almost  colourless,  nevertheless  becomes  the 
most  virile  and  uncompromising  when  it  solidifies.  For  it 
does  solidify,  as  we  scrutinize  it;  it  congeals,  first  into  the 
broad  code  of  common  sense  and  then,  in  a  more  mature 
philosophic  age,  into  a  religious  dogmatism.  To  be  sure, 
these  two  are  not  usually  considered  blood-relatives.  Yet 
what  is  common  sense  but  the  summary  name  for  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  practically-minded,  when  he  reflects  upon 
mundane  matters  ?  And  what  is  religious  truth  but  the 
embodiment  of  our  practical  needs  at  their  greatest  depth 
and  in  the  longest  run  ?  Religion  seeks  ultimate  salvation, 
while  common  sense  looks  for  worldly  welfare  —  a  more 
immediate  well-being.  Thus  a  religious  philosophy  is  the 
maturest  form  of  the  practical  type.  Let  us  dwell  on  these 
points  for  a  moment. 

Common  sense  is  an  attitude  of  mind  which  believes  what 
recommends  itself  immediately  to  the  sane,  normal  person, 
to  the  person  who  can  "  get  on  "  in  life.  It  is  based  upon 
practical  rather  than  scientific  or  artistic  grounds.  It  does 
not  in  the  first  instance  stand  for  a  clear-cut  body  of  doctrine, 
though  where  it  does  believe  it  is  very  positive.  It  is  not  to 
be  confused  with  the  common  stock  of  knowledge  in  a  given 
age.  That  depends  on  education,  the  prevailing  bent  of  that 


352  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

age's  development,  or  other  accidents;  while  common  sense 
has  varied  but  little  since  the  dawn  of  history.  Thus,  the 
atomic  theory  is  not  a  matter  of  common  sense,  however 
universally  it  be  accepted.  The  Copernican  theory  and  the 
Darwinian  theory  are  not  decided  by  common  sense;  yet 
they  are  almost  commonplaces  in  our  age.  These  things  are 
not  common  sense  because  they  are  not  capable  of  imme- 
diate decision  on  practical  grounds.  The  eminent  scientist, 
notoriously,  is  often  lacking  in  common  sense;  so  too  the 
great  artist.  It  is  the  "  hard-headed  "  man  of  action  to 
whom  we  look  for  the  greater  degree  of  that  faculty,  akin 
as  it  is  to  the  wordly  virtue  of  shrewdness.  Hear  its  de- 
scription by  a  professed  defender,  and  note  the  prominence 
of  the  practical  categories  in  it.  "  This  inward  light  or 
sense  is  given  by  heaven  to  different  persons  in  different 
degrees.  There  is  a  certain  degree  of  it  which  is  necessary  to 
our  being  subjects  of  law  and  government,  capable  of  manag- 
ing our  own  affairs,  and  answerable  for  our  conduct  towards 
others :  this  is  called  common  sense,  because  it  is  common  to 
all  men  with  whom  we  can  transact  business,  or  call  to 
account  for  their  conduct  "  (Thomas  Reid,  On  the  Intellect- 
ual Powers,  Essay  6,  ch.  2:  edition  of  Hamilton,  I,  p.  422). 
Common  sense  does  not  seek  scientific  proof  of  its  tenets, 
though  it  is  not  necessarily  hostile  to  that.  It  is  dogmatic; 
it  regards  what  it  sees  as  self-evident  to  a  sane  mind.  Com- 
mon sense  asserts  the  reality  of  external  objects,  of  our 
fellow-men's  minds,  of  the  categories  we  seem  to  use  in  daily 
life,  such  as  cause,  free  choice,  substance,  purpose,  individual, 
universal,  law,  possibility,  necessity,  personality,  soul,  etc. 
It  does  not  feel  obliged  to  deduce  these  categories  from  a 
single  source;  they  are  deemed  valid  because  they  are  part 
of  life.  Common  sense  however  respects  reason;  it  believes 
that  reason,  properly  used,  confirms  these  assertions.  In 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       353 

fact,  it  often  uses  the  term  "  reasonable  "  as  the  seal  of  its 
approval.  It  is  not  radical  —  for  radicalism  generally  con- 
notes one-sidedness  —  but  conservative;  it  is  synthetic, 
because  life  is  many-sided  and  it  is  the  great  guide  of  life. 
It  looks  pragmatic,  but  (as  above  noted)  its  breadth  and 
vagueness  prevent  it  from  reducing  all  reality  to  one  for- 
mula, as  pragmatism  tends  to  do.  It  is  objective-minded, 
and  it  respects  the  laws  of  logic  as  ends-in- themselves;  it 
justifies  both  theory  and  practice,  art,  beauty,  and  religion 
—  all  the  main  roads  by  which  man  makes  progress.  It  is 
optimistic,  yet  not  unpleasantly  so;  it  does  not  explain 
away  evil.  In  short,  it  is  a  genuinely  synthetic  position, 
which  points  out  the  many  truths  and  realities  of  the  uni- 
verse, sees  that  they  are  sufficiently  defined,  and  shows  that 
reason,  while  not  deducing  them  out  of  nothing,  or  out  of  one 
another,  yet  reveals  their  harmony  and  mutual  confirmation. 
And  its  appeal  is  always,  in  the  last  analysis,  to  that  inexact 
but  indispensable  faculty,  sane  judgment. 

Most  philosophers  and  scientists  nowadays  probably  re- 
gard common  sense  as  uncritical  and  below  the  level  of  the 
serious  search  for  truth.  This  is  a  radical  misunderstanding. 
Common  sense  is  not  to  be  compared  quantitatively  with 
scientific  demonstration;  the  two  are  incommensurable, 
disparate.  To  ask  which  is  better  is  like  asking  "  which  is 
truer,  vision  or  touch  ?  "  The  exclusive  rationalist,  rating 
common  sense  as  a  lesser  degree  of  thought,  stands  upon  a 
dogma  as  incapable  of  proof  as  common  sense's  dogmas; 
upon  a  dogma,  moreover,  which  his  daily  life  denies.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  most  of  the  important  objects  of  every-day 
belief  have  never  been  scientifically  tested  —  often  could 
not  be  tested,  indeed.  Your  mind  has  never  been  demon- 
strated to  me;  yet  I  believe  in  it  with  a  certainty  far  exceed- 
ing the  strength  of  that  argument  from  analogy  by  which  I 


354  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

try  to  justify  the  belief.  The  external  world  itself  cannot  be 
proved  real;  but  I  feel  that  to  doubt  it  would  be  insane. 
Do  not  these  two  categories  of  reality  cover  the  larger  por- 
tion of  human  experience  ?  Common  sense  is  inevitably 
trusted;  in  comparison  with  the  sum  of  its  deliverances, 
science  has  scarcely  more  than  touched  the  fringe  of  our 
body  of  knowledge.  But  it  is  no  part  of  common  sense  to 
reciprocate  the  hostility  of  reason;  it  is  synthetic.  It  has  a 
deep-seated  confidence  that  reason  cannot  in  the  end  conflict 
with  its  decisions,  even  as  reason  cannot  disprove  the 
validity  of  our  sense-experience. 

In  the  history  of  philosophy,  common-sense  systems  are 
not  infrequent.  One  instance  appeared  during  the  period  of 
Graeco-Roman  skepticism,  under  the  name  eclecticism. 
There  it  was  a  reaction  against  the  keen  refutation  proffered 
by  Pyrrho  and  others,  of  the  possibility  of  knowledge.  If 
Pyrrhonism  showed  that  we  cannot  demonstrate  an  ex- 
ternal world,  our  fellows,  or  God,  eclecticism  replied  that  a 
sane  practical  attitude  does  not  need  demonstration  of 
them,  but  finds  them  self-evident.  Much  later,  the  same 
tendency  appeared  in  the  thinkers  of  the  "  Scottish  school," 
Reid,  Stewart,  et  al.  Unfortunately,  neither  of  these  schools 
prosecuted  their  inquiries  in  a  thoroughgoing  manner.  The 
eclectics  were  hampered  by  the  material  unrest  of  their 
times,  and  the  Scots  were  bound  down  by  the  narrowness  of 
their  interests.  Reid  and  his  allies,  like  most  English- 
speaking  philosophers,  were  too  exclusively  occupied  with 
the  problem  of  knowledge  to  institute  studies  of  the  objec- 
tive universe.  The  Intellectual  Powers  of  Man  and  the 
Active  Powers  of  Man  furnish  but  little  evidence  on  the  prob- 
lems of  causality,  possibility,  contingency,  eternity  and 
time,  God,  immortality.  A  better  articulated  instance  of 
the  common-sense  position  is  found  in  a  later  philosopher, 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       355 

whose  Scottish  descent  combined  with  his  Teutonic  training 
to  develop  the  practical  motive  into  a  clear-cut  system.  At 
the  same  time  this  philosopher's  love  of  independence  and 
of  scientific  demonstration  prevented  him  from  carrying  the 
common-sense  attitude  into  the  second  and  deeper  form  of 
the  practical  motive,  viz.,  an  objective  religious  synthesis; 
for  that  reason  the  system  of  Kant  is  a  transition  between 
the  two  forms  of  the  practical  motive.  It  will  be  instruc- 
tive to  consider  it  for  a  moment  in  this  light;  for  by  learn- 
ing wherein  Kant  fell  short  of  the  latter  we  may  better 
comprehend  the  full-fledged  practical  synthesis. 

A  large  part,  and  that  too  a  central  part,  of  the  Kantian 
philosophy  might  fairly  be  characterized  by  the  epithet 
sublimated  common  sense.  "Sublimated"  we  say,  because 
the  common  sense  of  most  men  would  hardly  consider 
Kant's  doctrine  self-evident;  but  it  stands  for  an  attenuated 
form  of  what  is  self-evident.  Thus,  for  instance,  did  the 
doctrine  of  things-in-themselves.  The  real  objects,  inde- 
pendent of  our  perception,  correspond  to  a  common  sense 
motive;  but  they  are  refined  away  to  an  existence  without 
character  to  which  the  ordinary  man's  common  sense  could 
attach  little  significance.  Kant's  motive  for  believing  in 
these  things  could  hardly  have  been  anything  but  a  practical 
one;  he  cannot  be  said  to  have  offered  a  serious  logical  plea 
for  what  "  it  had  never  entered  his  head  to  doubt."  The 
"  refutation  of  idealism  "  can  hardly  be  held  to  justify  the 
Dinge  an  sich.  Kant  himself  felt  that  Berkeleyanism  was 
wrong,  as  we  may  see  from  his  phrase  "  a  scandal  to  phi- 
losophy." The  main  stem  of  his  system,  however  —  in  an  at 
least  respectable  interpretation  of  that  many-faced  entity  — 
was  his  ethical  doctrine;  and  in  that,  the  practical  motive 
attains  a  clear  primacy.  If  the  needs  of  daily  conduct  form 
the  basis  of  most  common-sense  assumptions,  the  needs  of 


356  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

ideal  or  moral  conduct  might  be  said  to  constitute  a  sub- 
limated practical  motive.  Common  sense  here  becomes,  or 
if  you  please,  is  transformed  into  an  altogether  unworldly 
attitude.  We  say  "  is  transformed  into  "  in  order  to  express 
the  sublimation,  the  almost  evaporation,  we  would  desig- 
nate. Yet  the  practical  element  is  continuous  throughout 
the  transition.  Dogmatically  Kant  declares  that  we  have 
an  "  ought  "  which  we  feel  drawn  to  obey;  nor  does  he  care 
to  deduce  or  defend  this  category.  It  is  what  any  normal 
man  would  admit;  it  is  the  practical  basis  of  living,  in  the 
best  sense  of  living,  viz.,  the  living  of  a  personal  life  which 
distinguishes  man  from  the  animals.  And  on  this  practical- 
dogmatic  —  we  have  not  said  erroneous  —  base,  Kant  rears 
his  argument  for  God  and  for  immortality.  Since  we  need 
infinite  tune  in  order  to  realize  full  moral  perfection,  im- 
mortality is  a  practical  implicate  of  the  moral  life.  It  is  not 
a  logical  implication  of  facts.  Morality  ought  to  be,  indeed, 
a  verifiable  experience,  says  Kant;  but  immortality  is  not, 
in  any  actual  sense,  entailed  by  morality.  It  cannot  be 
demonstrated,  as  a  scientific  certainty  for  the  future.  It 
enlarges  our  knowledge,  to  be  certain  that  we  are  immortal ; 
yet  Kant  repeatedly  insists,  only  in  a  practical,  not  in  an 
ontological  sense.  And  the  same  is  true  with  regard  to  God's 
existence.  That  too  is  a  demand  of  the  moral  life,  in  the 
sense  that  without  a  Just  Judge  moral  effort,  success,  or 
failure,  would  be  meaningless.  Yet  God  is  no  fixed  fact 
which  we  can  by  reason  demonstrate.  We  have  not  on- 
tological certainty,  but  practical  certainty  —  or  as  we, 
unconsciously  illustrating  the  doctrine,  say  today,  moral 
certainty  of  his  reality;  no  scientific  use  can  be  made  of 
it,  nothing  can  be  inferred  from  it.  Such  is  the  rarified 
common  sense,  or  higher  practicality,  of  the  Kantian 
system. 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM        357 

But  it  falls  just  short  of  a  genuine  practical  doctrine.  For 
it  is  not  truly  synthetic;  and  the  practical  motive  is  syn- 
thetic. Witness  the  limitations  which  Kant  imposed  on 
his  own  results.  He  included  the  supersensuous  world, 
together  with  the  sense-world,  in  the  kingdom  of  reality  — 
an  apparent  synthesis  —  and  he  did  it  by  the  practical 
method;  but  he  was  not  willing  to  accept  that  method  un- 
reservedly. He  comes  ever  so  near  to  doing  so,  but  he  stops 
just  this  side  of  the  full  practical  synthesis.  For  in  the  full 
practical  synthesis,  a  moral  certainty  is  of  an  objective 
reality.  The  reader  is  only  tantalized  by  Kant's  assurance 
that  our  "  practical  certainty  "  of  God  and  immortality  is 
quite  as  certain  as  any  scientific  certainty  can  be,  for  Kant 
always  adds  that  it  is  a  different  kind  of  certainty,  and  does 
not  have  ontological  validity.  Reason  in  its  practical  use  is 
eternally  distinct  from  reason  in  its  theoretic  use;  it  gives 
no  knowledge  of  facts;  we  cannot  use  it  to  learn  any  further 
facts.  Herein  Kant's  system  remains,  like  Plato's,  no  real 
synthesis  after  all.  It  fails  to  take  the  final  step,  and  tends 
to  slip  back  into  the  class  of  partisan  types.  That  it  did  not 
quite  slip  back,  is  due,  one  naturally  supposes,  to  the  taste 
Kant  had  gotten  of  the  delights  of  synthesis.  But  the  net 
result  was  that  Kant  offered  to  the  world  a  system  in  un- 
stable equilibrium ;  unstable  because  built  on  compromises. 
A  compromise  is  such  a  combination  of  two  complementary 
views  as  includes  one,  or  both,  emasculated;  and  the  in- 
justice of  the  emasculation  is  sure  to  lead  to  a  revolt.  Hence, 
of  course,  we  were  bound  to  have  the  exclusive  choice  of  the 
practical  side,  without  the  objectivity-factor,  in  Fichte;  of 
the  intellectual  side  in  the  rationalistic  idealists,  as  seen  in 
our  third  chapter;  neither  choice  retaining  the  synthetic 
motive.  And  in  order  to  appreciate  the  equilibration  which 
the  complete  practical  synthesis  will  offer  us,  we  had  best 


358  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

pause  for  a  moment  and  consider  the  manner  of  Kant's 
compromise,  as  shown  in  one  of  its  most  important  instances. 
This  is  the  "  solution  "  of  the  third  antinomy.  There  is  a 
deadlock  between  determinism  and  freedom  and  Kant 
would  combine  them  in  harmony.  He  decided  that  they 
may  be  so  combined  if  the  freedom  and  the  necessity  are 
relegated  to  different  aspects.  Every  deed  that  a  man  does 
is  determined;  it  must  happen  just  when,  where,  and  as  it 
does.  Yet  a  deed  which  is  performed  as  in  accord  with  the 
moral  law  is  a  free  deed.  Viewed  as  expression  of  man's 
rational  self,  of  his  true  personality,  the  "  noumenon,"  it  is 
a  free  act;  viewed  as  a  phenomenon  in  space  and  time  it  is  a 
determined  occurrence.  Now  it  is  easy  to  see  —  and  many 
have  noticed  it  —  that  this  putting  of  freedom  over  into  the 
"  intelligible  aspect  "  of  the  matter  is  an  emasculation  of 
freedom.  Kant  defines  it  thus  in  order  to  admit  it;  as  if  one 
should  show  his  friendliness  to  an  enemy  by  inviting  him  to 
his  table  bound  and  gagged.  The  enemy  cannot  eat,  nor 
can  the  free  act  show  its  freedom.  The  phenomenon  had  to 
appear  as  and  when  it  did,  and  there  was  nothing  undeter- 
mined about  it.  It  is  but  a  euphemism,  a  respectable  name 
to  cover  impotence;  a  form  of  prudery,  after  all,  to  which 
the  compromising  temper,  and  too  often  the  moral  as  well, 
is  prone.  Doubtless  this  method  will  continue  as  long  as 
man's  native  false  modesty  continues;  for  it  at  bottom  ex- 
presses the  same  instinct  as  that  which  leads  men  ever  to 
seek  softer  words  to  designate  the  disreputable  and  unmen- 
tionable. Of  this  type  also  is  the  idealism  which  defines 
matter  as  object-for-mind,  but  makes  all  mind  dependent 
upon  body.  It  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  materialism; 
for  the  laws  of  matter  are  given  the  reins,  and  how  should 
it  avail  that  the  reins  are  defined  in  ideal  terms  ?  They 
drive  as  effectually  under  one  definition  as  under  another. 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       359 

Such  "  reconciliation  "  of  religion  and  science  as  that  of  F. 
Paulsen  belongs  in  the  same  pillory.  Science  is  to  have  the 
decision  on  all  questions  of  fact,  and  religion  is  given  per- 
mission to  interpret  those  facts  optimistically.  But  since 
the  very  probable  destruction  of  this  earth  and  all  that 
therein  is  can  hardly  be  interpreted  as  a  divine  consumma- 
tion, it  seems  that  religion's  part  is  here  as  void  as  is  free- 
dom's in  the  Kantian  programme.  We  can  be  optimists 
only  by  forgetting  the  inevitable  end.  At  bottom,  indeed, 
these  solutions  are  not  honest.  It  would  be  better  to  ac- 
knowledge that  they  are  partisan  views.  And  in  fact  Kant's 
successors  were,  until  the  grand  synthesis  of  Hegel,  frankly 
partisan. 

When  Kant  sublimated  common  sense  into  the  practical 
postulates,  he  forsook  the  spirit  of  common  sense;  for  that 
faculty  would  not  hesitate  to  say  that  what  is  certain  is  a 
fact,  and  can  be  used  for  scientific,  theoretical  purposes  as 
much  as  for  moral  ones.  The  true  perfection  of  the  common- 
sense  synthesis  is  found  in  a  doctrine  which  gives  ontological 
validity  to  the  objects  of  religion.  Yet  the  name  common 
sense  is  hardly  adequate  to  these  high  flights  of  the  human 
mind.  The  chief  guide  is  not  logic,  to  be  sure;  it  is  still  of  a 
practical  nature.  What  then  fulfills  the  requirement  of 
being  a  sufficient,  though  not  a  logical  guide,  to  answer 
man's  religious  wants  ?  What  alone  provides  the  firmness 
which  ensures  that  unanimity  necessary  to  a  practical, 
working,  organized  religion,  i.  e.,  to  a  conduct  of  life  ad- 
justed to  the  deepest  needs  of  man  ?  The  reply  is  obvious: 
dogma.  And  dogma,  to  have  a  sufficient  sanction,  must  be 
called  revelation.  Yet  the  revelation,  if  it  is  to  be  a  work- 
able one,  must  not  be  hostile  to  reason;  it  must  be  capable 
of  clear-cut  expression,  must  be  shown  consistent  with  the 
facts  of  science  and  the  methods  of  logic;  yes,  even  on  occa- 


360  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

sion  must  be  susceptible  of  demonstration  by  reason.  It 
belongs  to  the  very  nature  of  a  practical  synthesis  that  it 
includes  reason  as  well  as  revelation;  for  reason  is  one  of  our 
organs  of  truth,  though  not  the  only  organ,  and  the  exclusion 
of  reason  cannot  long  satisfy  the  human  mind.  A  body  of 
religious  dogma,  authoritative  and  revealed,  clearly  artic- 
ulated, supported,  and  sometimes  even  proved  by  reason  — 
such  alone  is  able  to  constitute  the  full-fledged  type  of  a 
practical  synthesis.  Only  such  a  corpus  rdigionis  can  answer 
man's  fundamental  practical  need,  i.  e.,  his  need  of  adjust- 
ing his  soul  to  the  environment  of  eternity.  Herein  then  the 
practical  synthesis  assumes  its  maturer  form,  the  religious 
synthesis.  In  regard  to  questions  of  this  terrestrial  sphere, 
common  sense  is  guide  enough;  in  regard  to  ultimate  ques- 
tions of  life  and  destiny,  revealed  religion  is  the  only  form 
which  the  practical  motive  may  assume.  The  complete 
practical  synthesis  will  then  unite  these  two.  Such  a  syn- 
thesis we  find  in  the  system  which  was  the  culmination  of 
scholastic  thought,  the  system  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas. 

The  aim  of  philosophy  during  the  mediaeval  period  was  in 
the  main  a  practical  one.  It  was  slow  in  showing  its  dom- 
inant motive;  it  had  to  pass  through  many  partisan  types 
before  it  could  come,  as  Hegel  would  say,  to  clear  self- 
consciousness.  Augustine's  declaration  of  self  as  the  original 
certainty,  Eriugena's  pantheism,  Abelard's  conceptualism, 
Anselm's  rationalistic  proof  of  God,  and  many  other  one- 
sided tendencies,  had  first  to  be  lived  through.  The  partisan 
Plato  was  on  the  whole  the  inspiration  of  its  youth;  only 
toward  the  period  of  its  ripeness  did  the  more  practical  and 
more  synthetic  Aristotle  begin  to  assume  his  sway.  It  was, 
indeed,  bound  to  be  so ;  for  Aristotle  was  the  philosopher  of 
common  sense  and  the  adjuster  of  the  quarrel,  which  Plato 
originated  and  inflamed,  between  the  real  and  the  ideal. 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       361 

Aristotle  alone  could  be  the  minister  of  a  doctrine  which 
must  be  received  by  a  working,  organized  Church.  And 
when  we  remember  that  the  spiritual  progenitors  of  the 
Catholic  system  outside  Christianity  were  Aristotle  and 
Rome  —  both  preeminent  among  the  ancients  for  their 
practical  inclination  —  we  see  that  the  philosophy  of  the 
Church  was  predestined  to  the  character  in  question.  It 
would  not  have  been  possible  for  an  organization  which 
aimed  to  control  the  life  of  man  to  embrace  either  a  partisan 
type  or  a  rationalistic  synthesis. 

The  system  of  Aquinas  is,  by  common  consent,  the  sum- 
ming up  of  the  whole  period.  In  one  respect  it  surpasses 
even  Aristotle;  it  includes  the  motive  of  dogma,  or  revela- 
tion. Aristotle  had  been  trained  by  Plato,  and  was  but  one 
remove  from  that  great  rationalist;  Aquinas  was  trained  by 
both  Plato  and  Aristotle,  and  in  addition  got  from  Chris- 
tianity the  respect  for  the  revealed  Word.  To  rest  in  dogma 
is,  as  we  shall  see,  no  negative  principle,  but  a  positive  one ; 
and  is  inextricably  entwined  with  thought  and  action.  Con- 
sequently the  synthesis  performed  by  Aquinas  is  broader 
than  Aristotle's,  though  perhaps  not,  on  the  purely  logical 
side,  so  tightly  concatenated.  It  was  in  fact  just  the  super- 
lative breadth  of  the  former  thinker's  philosophy  which 
enabled  it  to  receive  the  highest  human  award  which  may  be 
bestowed,  viz.,  adoption  as  the  official  system  of  an  institu- 
tion whose  aim  is  to  succour  in  all  ways  the  life  of  man.  The 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  noted  for  its  practical  wisdom, 
early  discerned  the  fitness  of  the  Thomistic  synthesis  for 
the  needs  of  men,  and  it  has  never  found  reason  to  reverse 
that  decision.  It  is  not,  we  believe,  the  subtlety  of  Thomas 
• —  though  subtlety  there  is  in  plenty  —  nor  the  learning  — 
though  it  is  astonishing  —  but  the  largeness,  the  many- 
sidedness,  and  at  the  same  time  the  practicability,  the 


362  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

common-sense  reasonableness,  that  made  his  system  so 
acceptable.  Contrast  it,  for  instance,  with  that  of  Duns 
Scotus:  the  British  thinker,  though  powerful,  did  not 
combine  revelation  and  reason,  but  tended  to  separate  them 
and  to  give  each  its  own  sphere  without  interference  from 
the  other.  Herein  the  Doctor  Subtilis  anticipates  a  little  of 
the  Kantian  compromise.  He  offers  no  real  synthesis. 
St.  Thomas,  on  the  other  hand,  allowed  to  revelation  and 
reason  both  distinction  and  union;  they  are  different 
methods,  but  they  often  give  the  same  results,  and  they 
directly  support  each  other. 

Of  course  we  cannot  attempt  in  a  brief  account  to  do  jus- 
tice to  this  gigantic  product.  In  characterizing  the  system 
as  a  practical  system,  we  but  call  attention  to  a  certain 
eternal  motive  in  philosophy;  which  motive,  however,  we 
do  believe,  played  a  chief  part  in  the  structure.  For  that 
matter  our  characterization  is  no  new  one.  It  is  not  uncom- 
mon to  note  the  practical  character  of  scholasticism's  phi- 
losophy; James  called  it  "common  sense's  college-trained 
younger  sister,"  and  certain  of  the  later  scholastics  have 
spoken  in  a  similar  manner.  "  Realism  "  said  L.  J.  Walker, 
speaking  of  the  Thomistic  epistemology  "  .  .  .  is  a  phi- 
losophy which  recognizes  the  laws  of  common  sense  as  in  the 
last  analysis  the  source  whence  flows  all  certitude  and 
truth  "  (Theories  of  Knowledge,  p.  677).  So  too  J.  Balmes: 
"  I  believe  the  expression  common  sense  to  denote  a  law  of 
our  mind,  apparently  differing  according  to  the  different 
cases  to  which  it  applies,  but  in  reality  .  .  .  always  the 
same,  consisting  in  a  natural  inclination  of  our  mind  to  give 
its  assent  to  some  truths  not  attested  by  consciousness  nor 
demonstrated  by  reason,  necessary  to  all  men  in  order  to 
satisfy  the  wants  of  sensitive,  intellectual,  and  moral  life  " 
(Fundamental  Philosophy,  Eng.  tr.  by  O.  Brownson,  I, 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       363 

p.  221).  We  have  italicized  the  last  phrase  in  order  to  em- 
phasize its  agreement  with  our  own  interpretation.  Even 
if,  however,  this  practical  motive  played  only  a  small  part, 
we  should  feel  justified  in  pointing  it  out;  but  we  hope  to 
show,  by  considering  the  views  of  Thomism  upon  certain  of 
the  chief  philosophical  issues,  that  the  part  is  no  mean  one. 
And  there  is  the  more  need  of  this;  for  the  accounts  of  the 
system  given  in  most  of  our  histories,  yes,  even  in  some  of 
those  of  the  Catholics  themselves,  show  no  ruling  idea 
throughout  the  system.  The  doctrine  appears  as  a  patch- 
work, a  medley,  a  pudding-stone  affair.  The  only  principle 
common  to  all  its  parts  is  by  most  Protestants  said  to  be  the 
principle  that  one  must  not  contradict  revelation.  But  this 
would  not  account  for  the  Thomistic  doctrines  on  the  many 
points  which  have  no  direct  connection  with  religion.  Yet 
it  is  the  case  that  there  is  no  one  tenet,  comparable  to  the 
dialectic  of  Hegel,  running  through  the  whole  system,  the 
same  in  all  the  parts.  Common  sense  is  not  strictly  a  doc- 
trine, but  an  attitude.  Revelation  likewise  is  not  one  but 
manifold.  And  this  is  what  makes  the  system  .unique.  The 
bond  of  union  varies,  and  in  its  variety  lies  a  charm ;  for  the 
variety  is  not  haphazard,  but  animated  by  a  consistent  in- 
tention. That  intention  is  to  accept  what  furthers  the  life 
of  man,  here  and  hereafter;  and  life  as  here  used  includes  all 
aspects,  the  contemplative,  the  scientific,  the  more  narrowly 
practical,  and  the  aesthetic. 

Facing  as  it  does  in  so  different  a  direction,  the  practical 
synthesis  will  travel  a  very  different  road  from  the  way  of 
Hegel.  The  rational  synthesis  portrays  an  organic  whole; 
the  practical,  an  agglomerative  one.  For  common-sense 
dogmas  are  intent  upon  possession  of  truths;  not  method, 
but  results,  comprise  their  aim.  They  are,  taken  by  them- 
selves, rather  loosely  knit.  Their  categories  are  not  deduced, 


364  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

nor  are  they  fused  into  new  unities,  "  higher  syntheses." 
Addition  rather  than  evolution  describes  the  transition  from 
one  category  to  another.  "  The  complexus  of  common- 
sense  truths  has  grown  rather  by  increment  than  by  higher 
synthesis,"  says  Mr.  Walker  (Theories  of  Knowledge,  p.  438). 
The  result  is  that  the  student  of  Thomism  is  impressed  by  a 
magnitude,  as  of  the  sea.  Beside  the  vast  body  of  doctrine 
contained  in  the  Summa,  our  modern  epistemologies  seem 
tiny  indeed.  Yet  the  steps  by  which  we  pass  forward  are 
generally  simple.  The  "  dialectic  "  of  Hegel  is  difficult  to 
many;  to  know  it  is  to  know  the  system.  The  step  from  one 
doctrine  of  Thomism  to  another  is  difficult  to  no  one,  and 
counselled  only  by  the  desire  tb  fare  onward :  this  practical 
impulse  has  no  logical  subtleties,  and  is  no  harder  than 
walking.  But  it  is  a  very  long  walk  indeed  through  the 
edifice;  and  one  feels  that  the  system  can  be  comprehended 
only  by  a  sustained  attention  such  as  perhaps  no  other  sys- 
tem demands.  For,  aggregate  as  it  is,  it  is  yet  a  system. 
Doctrines  are  added,  but  they  are  adjusted.  To  be  sure, 
they  are  not  "  transmuted  "  or  "  aufgehoben."  Whatever 
is  incorporated  is  taken  in  its  positive  form.  But  it  is 
trimmed  and  shaved,  if  need  be.  Save  and  include,  says 
this  conservative  philosophy,  but  let  it  be  done  in  no  passive 
manner.  Certain  parts,  certain  doctrines,  must  be  rejected. 
Some  truth,  to  be  sure,  can  always  be  extracted  from  them, 
but  the  rest  is  not  "  sublated  "  but  is  uncompromisingly 
rejected.  Thomism  is  not  a  body  of  compromises.  It  is 
written  in  plain  black  and  white.  It  refutes  heresy.  It  is 
virile  as  any  partisan.  It  has  no  realities  that  are  real  from 
the  finite  point  of  view,  but  not  from  God's;  no  distinction 
of  appearance  and  reality.  Thus  in  its  synthesis  it  is  not 
absolutely  all-inclusive.  True  to  Aristotle's  rule  of  modera- 
tion, it  refuses  to  carry  synthesis  to  the  extreme;  it  adds  the 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       365 

dash  of  partiality  needed.  And  this  results  in  another 
divergence  from  Hegelianism.  The  latter  shows  a  symmet- 
rical universe,  as  we  saw  in  Chapter  VIII;  Thomism  makes 
it  asymmetrical.  Of  two  complementary  categories,  one  is 
usually  more  fundamental  than  the  other.  The  particulars 
are  weighted  more  than  the  universals,  the  actual  more  than 
the  potential,  the  object  more  than  the  subject,  substance 
more  than  accident,  etc.  Thus  the  system  combines,  in  a 
curious  and  beautiful  way,  the  breadth  of  synthesis  with  the 
virility  of  partisanship;  it  is  so  synthetic  that  it  includes 
more  than  synthesis. 

We  now  pass  to  the  special  doctrines  of  St.  Thomas;  our 
endeavour  shall  be  to  show  how  they  exemplify  the  above 
traits. 

The  category  par  excellence  of  the  practical  point  of  view 
is  causation.  To  common  sense,  causing  is  making;  it  is  the 
evidence  of  that  most  admirable  of  all  things,  power,  of  the 
ability  to  do.  And  it  is  perhaps  the  central  category  of 
Thomism;  for  it  is  the  clew  to  the  discovery  of  the  system's 
chief  entity,  God.  God  is  the  first  cause  and  unmoved 
mover ;  the  proofs  of  His  existence  are  the  well-known  causal 
proofs  (Summa  Theologica,  part  I,  question  2,  art.  3).  And 
God  creates  the  world  from  nothing,  by  sheer  efficacy.  "... 
creation,  which  is  the  emanation  of  all  being,  is  from  the  not- 
being  which  is  nothing  "  (Summa,  part  I,  question  45,  art.  i; 
Eng.  tr.  by  Dominican  Fathers,  II,  p.  221).  It  is  not  rational 
necessity  which  evolves  the  world  out  of  God;  but  His 
simple  fiat  which  produces  it  ex  nihilo.  The  Hegelian  Ab- 
solute, which  is  the  whole,  has  no  efficacious  relation  toward 
its  parts;  it  conceives  the  situation  under  the  logical  rubric 
of  immanence.  Herein  is  the  rationalism  of  pantheism  in 
contrast  with  the  practical  quality  of  theism.  Moreover,  all 
that  we  can  understand  of  God  is  understood  through  his 


366  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

causal  agency.  His  own  inner  nature  we  cannot  know  in 
positive  terms.  "  Now,  because  we  cannot  know  what  God 
is,  but  rather  what  He  is  not  ..."  says  the  Doctor  in  part  I, 
question  3  (Eng.  tr.,  I,  p.  28).  We  can  predicate  of  Him,  to 
be  sure,  simplicity,  perfection,  infinity,  unity,  etc. ;  but  these 
are  negative  attributes.  The  property  from  which  so  many 
propositions  about  Him  are  derived  by  St.  Thomas,  viz., 
that  His  essence  is  His  existence  —  this  attribute  is  to  us  a 
negative  matter;  for  we  cannot  represent  it  to  ourselves. 
God  of  course  understands  it,  and  from  His  point  of  view 
therefore  the  ontological  proof  is  sound;  but  to  us  human 
beings  that  proof  is  inconclusive.  When  we  come  to  fun- 
damentals, then,  we  cannot  be  rationalists;  we  cannot  get 
above  the  practical  platform  which  accepts  God  as  the 
Maker,  Sustainer,  and  Worker;  we  cannot  see  in  Him  the 
"  aseity,"  the  a  priori  necessity,  which  Hegel  demanded. 
Our  attitude  toward  God  must  be  based  upon  His  practical 
character. 

It  is  a  practical  category,  then,  which  ushers  us  into  the 
system.  And  the  syntheses  of  that  system  are  accomplished 
by  the  employment  of  this  category  and  others  like  it;  as  we 
have  now  to  set  forth.  Let  us  begin  with  the  Thomistic 
doctrine  of  God's  relation  to  the  world. 

What  are  the  antitheses  which  are  to  be  reconciled  ? 
There  are  two  alternative  positions:  pantheism  and  theism. 
Pantheism  affirms  that  the  whole  universe  alone  is  fit  to  be 
God.  For  only  such  a  whole  is  supreme,  since  it  is  limited 
or  determined  by  naught  outside  itself.  Theism,  on  the 
other  hand,  asserts  that  God  must  needs  be  distinct  from 
His  creation,  an  active  Being  to  whom  we  may  have  per- 
sonal relations.  St.  Thomas  chose  the  latter  alternative  and 
declared  pantheism  heresy.  Yet  he  accepted  something  of 
pantheism's  motive.  His  God  must  be  supreme;  and  he 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       367 

enables  us  to  ascribe  supremacy  to  God,  without  treachery 
to  theism,  by  his  doctrine  of  God's  causality.  According  to 
the  Doctor,  everything  which  God  creates,  while  numerically 
distinct  from  Himself,  yet  is  not  capable  of  limiting  His 
power.  God  has  made  all  things  and  God  continues  to  sus- 
tain them  after  creation.  They  are  never  let  go  apart  from 
Him  into  an  independent  existence.  They  would,  indeed, 
be  independent  realities  if  they  possessed  in  themselves  full 
reality.  But  they  do  not.  Every  created  thing  is  afflicted 
with  some  curtailment  of  being.  God  alone  is  completely 
actual,  actus  purus.  All  else  is  a  compound  of  act  and  po- 
tency; but  potency  is  incomplete  actuality.  It  is  thereby 
the  mark  which  distinguishes  the  made  from  the  maker,  and 
which  reveals  the  inferiority  of  the  made  to  the  maker.  For 
a  rationalistic  view,  the  effect  is  the  equivalent  of  the  cause: 
for  a  practical  one,  it  is  somehow  less.  It  is  then  once  more 
the  common-sense  category  of  causation  which  renders  pos- 
sible the  union  of  the  antitheses.  Only  because  God  is 
conceived  as  the  Maker  and  Manager  of  a  universe  which 
is  less  than  Himself,  as  the  effect  is  less  than  the  cause, 
can  He  possess  both  the  supremacy  which  pantheism 
demands  and  the  distinct  personality  for  which  theism 
battles. 

Yet  God  is  no  merely  practical  being;  He  is  also  intelli- 
gence. In  fact,  He  unites  these  two:  He  creates  the  world, 
and  He  contemplates  and  perfectly  understands  His  creation 
and  Himself.  The  rationality  of  His  nature  is  attested  in  the 
assertion  of  St.  Thomas,  that  His  essence  is  His  existence. 
God  accepts  the  ontological  proof.  And  even  God's  creating 
is  no  irrational  thing,  for  He  creates  through  the  Platonic 
ideas  or  "  exemplars."  In  God,  we  may  say,  the  practical 
side,  the  activity,  is  absolutely  one  with  the  rational  aspect. 
Yet  we  cannot  understand  how  it  is  so.  The  synthesis  of 


368  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

rational  and  practical  motives  is  not  a  rationalistic  synthesis. 
We  must  perforce  accept  it,  and  upon  practical  grounds. 
For  it  is  a  demand  of  the  whole  causal  interpretation  of 
things,  that  God  be  the  one  First  Cause  and  source  of 
everything  —  of  power  and  reason  alike. 

Having  considered  the  chief  entity,  we  now  pass  to  some 
of  the  lesser  elements  of  the  system.  In  a  general  way  the 
manner  of  the  syntheses  is  indicated  by  the  composition  of 
each  article  of  the  Summa  Theologica.  The  question  being 
stated,  the  two  opposing  partisan  views  are  successively 
expounded,  the  second  being  adopted.  But  that  second 
view  is  then  adjusted  to  the  first,  in  that  the  first  is  shown 
to  be  amenable  to  a  distinction;  in  one  sense  it  is  correct, 
and  is  embodied  in  the  second,  while  in  another  sense  it  is 
rejected.  Thus  we  are  bidden  to  choose  between  the  two 
senses.  And  the  ground  of  the  choice  is  not  logical  necessity, 
compelling  us  to  adopt  as  an  implication  the  one  we  select; 
rather  we  add  the  measure  of  truth  it  contains  because  a 
sound  judgment  instinctively  perceives  its  value.  Often, 
indeed,  it  is  dogma  which  dictates  the  choice;  just  as,  more 
often,  it  is  dogma  which  has  already  compelled  the  adoption 
of  the  second  partisan  view.  But  dogma,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  the  very  acme  of  the  practical  motive.  The  choice  be- 
tween the  alternative  senses  of  the  first  partisan  view  is  of 
course  guided  by  consistency;  if  it  were  not  so,  the  motive 
of  the  synthesis  would  be  an  irrational  one.  But  the  practi- 
cal motive  never  runs  counter  to  reason.  It  is  something 
besides  reason,  and  often  something  including  it.  A  sane 
insight,  a  broad  view  of  life  and  the  needs  of  life,  would  wish 
to  include  both  factions.  To  do  this,  of  course,  a  shaving  of 
one  of  them  is  necessary:  it  must  be  pruned  if  it  is  to  be 
retained  in  the  vineyard.  Thus  there  results  an  asymmet- 
rical combination,  dictated  by  wise  judgment,  or  by  dogma, 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       369 

rather  than  synthesis  due  to  a  mutual  implication  of  the 
partial  types. 

Consider,  for  instance,  the  issue  between  faith  and  knowl- 
edge—  in  modern  terms,  between  religion  and  science. 
(Summa,  part  I,  question  i,  art.  i ;  Eng.  tr.,  I,  pp.  1-3.)  The 
one  partisan  says,  naught  is  to  be  believed  but  what  reason 
teaches.  For  if  there  were  knowledge  above  and  beyond 
reason,  then  we  ought  not  to  attempt  to  possess  it  —  for  it  is 
beyond  human  powers;  and  moreover  if  it  is  true,  it  will  be 
concerned  with  being,  which  is  object-matter  of  philosophy 
and  reason.  The  other  partisan  says:  but  there  is  revela- 
tion! and  philosophy,  with  its  reason,  is  fallible.  And  he 
might  add,  as  St.  Thomas  forbears  to  do  —  witness  the  dis- 
agreement of  philosophers.  The  synthesis  of  the  Angelic 
Doctor  finds  that  "  Since  human  reason  is  fallible  it  is  neces- 
sary that  there  should  be  a  revelation  vouchsafed  to  man, 
whereby  he  may  guide  his  intuitions  and  acts."  Note  first 
the  practical  motive.  There  is  no  logical  demonstration  of 
the  truth  of  revealed  religion.  It  must  be  accepted,  because 
without  it  we  cannot  order  our  lives,  in  view  of  the  here  and 
the  hereafter.  (Cf .  also  the  Encyclical  letter  of  Pope  Leo  XIII 
quoted  at  beginning  of  vol.  I,  op.  cit.)  As  for  Kant  God 
was  a  postulate  of  the  moral  life,  so  for  St.  Thomas  revela- 
tion must  simply  be  assumed  as  a  basis  of  the  whole  life  of 
man.  Secondly,  note  the  manner  in  which  each  partisan 
view  is  included.  The  argument  of  the  rationalist,  viz.,  if 
revelation  is  above  reason,  we  ought  not  to  seek  to  possess 
it  —  this  argument  is  accepted,  but  a  distinction  is  intro- 
duced. We  should  not  seek  to  possess  it  by  reason,  but  only 
by  faith,  the  organ  of  revelation.  The  rationalist  view  is 
not  passively  incorporated;  it  is  qualified.  Revelation  is 
absolutely  certain,  reason  is  open  to  error.  Revelation  can 
be,  without  the  aid  of  reason;  but  it  welcomes  the  aid  of 


370  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

reason.  We  here  adopt  the  rationalist's  side  in  addition  to 
the  side  of  faith,  because  reason  is  a  useful  organ  of  truth. 
It  "  generates,  nourishes,  defends  and  strengthens  "  faith. 
And  reason  is  not  always  under  suspicion.  There  are  many 
coercive  demonstrations,  and  that  too  quite  apart  from  the 
agreement  of  reason  with  faith.  Thus  reason  has,  in  fact, 
its  own  province,  as  theology  has;  and  each  is  therein 
autonomous.  Yet  when  it  is  a  matter  of  religious  dogma, 
reason  is  the  handmaid;  it  waits  upon  dogma,  showing  it  to 
be  consistent,  and  to  agree  with  other  truth,  but  it  cannot 
always  furnish  of  itself  the  doctrines.  The  Trinity,  Incarna- 
tion, Creation  in  Time,  et  al.,  could  not  be  proved  by  reason, 
though  they  can  be  articulated  and  by  analogy  compre- 
hended. Nothing  in  the  method  of  reason  is  rejected,  though 
it  is  not  considered  so  fundamental  on  the  gravest  questions. 
We  have  then  an  asymmetrical  combination,  grounded  in 
the  need  of  man  for  knowledge  that  can  be  both  affirmed 
without  fear  of  refutation  and  articulated  by  the  clearest 
logic.  "  This  doctrine  "  says  the  Catholic  Turner  "  of  the 
continuity  and  independence  of  the  natural  with  respect  to 
the  supernatural  order  of  truth,  is  the  core  of  scholasticism  " 
(History  of  Philosophy,  p.  420). 

Another  important  issue  lies  in  the  rival  claims  of  con- 
templation and  activity.  Is  philosophy  —  i.e.,  theology  —  a 
practical  or  a  theoretical  science  (question  i ,  art.  4)  ?  The 
solution  reads  thus:  "  Sacred  Doctrine  [theology],  being 
one,  extends  to  things  which  belong  to  different  philosophi- 
cal sciences.  .  .  .  Hence,  although  among  the  philosophical 
sciences  one  is  speculative  and  another  practical,  neverthe- 
less Sacred  Doctrine  includes  both.  .  .  .  Still,  it  is  rather 
speculative  than  practical,  because  it  is  more  concerned 
with  Divine  things  than  with  human  acts;  though  it  does 
treat  of  these  latter,  inasmuch  as  man  is  ordained  by  them 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       3/1 

to  the  perfect  knowledge  of  God,  in  which  consists  eternal 
bliss  "  (Eng.  tr.,  I,  p.  6).  Here  we  have  the  asymmetrical 
synthesis,  putting  contemplation  above  action,  yet  based 
upon  the  practical  motive.  Theology  is  contemplative,  for 
contemplation  of  God  is  to  man  the  source  of  the  highest 
joys.  Yet  in  order  to  comprehend  the  truths  of  theology, 
one  must  live  the  good  life;  hence  the'  practical  side  of 
theology  cannot  be  neglected.  But  it  is  in  a  sense  subsidiary. 
As  God  is  higher  than  man,  our  contemplation  of  God  is 
higher  than  our  regulation  of  our  own  activity.  The  latter 
is  a  means  to  the  former.  And  the  motive  throughout  is  the 
practical  one  of  attaining  beatitude. 

The  two  main  categories  which  apply  within  the  created 
world  are  act  and  potency  (or  potentiality).  This  couple, 
transformed  to  suit  the  occasion,  may  be  detected  throughout 
the  whole  realm  of  God's  work.  The  other  categories  are 
cases  of  these.  In  the  words  of  M.  DeWulf  "  the  theory  (of 
act  and  potency)  was  applied  universally  within  the  real 
order,  and  pervaded  and  penetrated  every  possible  composi- 
tion of  contingent  being,  of  being  limited  in  its  reality  " 
(History  of  Mediaeval  Philosophy,  Eng.  tr.  Coffey,  p.  317). 
The  universe  —  excluding  God  —  is  a  vast  congeries  of 
complementary  pairs,  each  pair  being  an  instance  of  the 
act-potency  relation.  Such  pairs  are  substance  and  acci- 
dent, form  and  matter,  individual  and  universal,  species  and 
genus,  existence  and  essence,  subject  and  predicate,  etc. 
Potency  herein  appears  as  a  device  which  enables  Thomism 
to  join  these  complements.  Each  member  of  the  pairs, 
hostile  as  it  becomes,  in  a  partisan  type,  to  its  correlate,  is 
by  being  treated  as  a  case  of  the  act-potency  relation  in- 
duced to  unite  peacefully  with  the  enemy.  We  shall  now 
examine  the  nature  of  this  important  instrument  of  syn- 
thesis, and  then  witness  its  employment  in  two  or  three 
crucial  cases. 


372  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

According  to  its  sponsor  Aristotle,  the  use  of  the  cate- 
gory "  potency  "  is  unavoidable.  For  without  it  we  should 
have  no  right  to  call  a  builder  a  builder  unless  he  were,  at 
the  time,  actually  building.  We  could  not  truthfully  say 
that  a  man  has  sight,  except  when  he  was  seeing:  "  the 
same  people  will  be  blind  many  times  in  the  day  —  and 
deaf  too  "  (Metaphysics,  9.  ch.  3,  io47a;  Eng.  tr.  Ross). 
The  needs  of  speech  and  human  intercourse  are  the  warrant 
of  the  concept.  And  a  little  reflection  confirms  this  opinion. 
Potency  has  but  the  slightest  intellectual  value;  it  is  hardly 
more  than  a  name  for  a  practical  attitude.  It  furnishes  no 
explanation  of  what  happens.  To  say  that  the  acorn  is 
potentially  the  oak  does  not  help  us  to  understand  why,  or 
how,  the  oak  develops  out  of  the  acorn.  "...  it  [potency] 
is  ...  worthless  in  so  far  as  it  throws  no  light  on  the  proc- 
ess which  it  indicates,  but  does  not  even  describe  "  (J. 
Ward,  The  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  108).  And  this  lack  of  value, 
from  the  rationalist's  point  of  view,  has  led  the  modern 
philosopher  to  depreciate  the  idea,  to  regard  it  as  a  mere 
name  or  subjective  fiction.  "  Reality  is  entirely  actuality  " 
says  Professor  Ward :  "  the  potential,  the  possible,  the  prob- 
lematic, on  the  other  hand,  belong  exclusively  to  abstract 
thought "  (ibid.).  But  explanatory  value  is  not  the  only 
test  of  truth,  for  rationalism  is  not  the  only  way  of  looking 
at  the  world.  The  justification  of  potency  lies  in  its  practical 
bearing.  Aristotle's  dictum  has  been  simply  forgotten.  The 
term  should  be  viewed  in  a  forward,  not  a  backward  direc- 
tion. It  illumines  the  future,  not  the  past.  We  adjust  our- 
selves to  oncoming  events  by  knowing  what  they  are  capable 
of  doing  to  us  or  suffering  from  us.  We  adapt  ourselves  to 
the  winter  climate  by  realizing  its  liability  to  frost  and  snow; 
while  it  is  yet  warm  we  fill  our  bins  with  coal.  We  calculate 
the  resisting  power  of  a  dam,  or  a  bridge;  yes,  science  itself 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM        373 

speaks  of  potential  energy,  thereby  designating  what  work 
we  may  expect  to  get  out  of  a  given  machine.  All  expecta- 
tion employs  the  category;  all  taking  of  precautions,  all 
measures  of  safety,  all  counsels  of  prudence,  would  but  for 
it  be  neglected.  In  practical  life  it  is  indispensable.  It  is 
the  common-sense  attitude  which  justifies  respect  for  po- 
tencies. It  is  just  the  practical  type  of  philosophy,  just 
that  point  of  view  which  considers  the  needs  of  action  as  the 
test  of  truth,  which  would  welcome  this  notion. 

Keeping  in  mind  this  peculiarity  of  the  potential,  we  may 
understand  its  fitness  as  an  instrument  of  synthesis.  If  the 
reason  is  unable  to  cope  with  the  problem,  the  practical 
attitude,  by  its  feeling  for  potentialities,  sees  how  the  deal 
may  be  closed.  When  the  partisan  views  conflict,  how  shall 
they  be  harmonized  ?  The  problem  is  similar  to  the  prob- 
lem of  living:  how  shall  I  adapt  myself  to  the  hostile  forces 
of  Nature  ?  Common  sense  replies,  "  by  recognizing  what 
those  forces  may  do  and  preparing  yourself  beforehand." 
The  same  method  Thomism  carries  into  its  metaphysic. 
Adjust  the  quarrel  by  accepting  the  one  as  true,  and  the 
other  as  potentially  true.  Though  I  live  easily  while  the  sun 
is  yet  warm,  nevertheless  sound  judgment  urges  me  to  lay 
in  fuel  against  the  future  cold.  Though  the  individual  is 
real  enough,  yet  it  must  be  real  in  such  a  way  as  to  allow  for 
the  universal;  the  universal  is  potentially  present  in  every 
individual.  Though  the  size  of  any  object  be  finite,  yet 
that  size  is,  potentially,  infinitely  divided.  To  accept  the 
enemy  as  a  potency  is  to  maintain  your  life;  and  this  holds 
for  categories  as  for  living  things.  And  is  not  this  address 
to  the  enemy  a  measure  of  surpassing  tact  ?  For  the  potency 
is  a  real  thing  and  influential;  yet  not  real  in  such  a  way 
as  to  offend  the  actual.  It  possesses  the  advantages  of 
reality  and  of  unreality  alike.  The  one  partisan  is  correct, 


374  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

the  other  too  is  correct,  but  correct  potentially,  correct  if 
a  little  qualification  is  added,  if  shaved,  bathed,  and  made 
presentable. 

But  let  us  instance  some  of  these  diplomatic  triumphs. 

The  dispute  about  the  reality,  in  the  material  world,  of 
both  finite  and  infinite  multitude,  is  taken  up  in  the  Summa, 
question  7,  art.  4.  St.  Thomas,  admitting,  of  course,  the 
reality  of  the  finite,  thus  states  his  solution:  "  Hence  it  is 
impossible  for  there  to  be  an  actually  infinite  multitude.  .  .  . 
A  potential  infinite  multitude  may  exist;  because  the  increase 
of  multitude  follows  upon  the  division  of  magnitude.  The 
more  a  thing  is  divided,  the  greater  number  of  things  result. 
Hence,  as  the  infinite  is  to  be  found  potentially  in  the  divi- 
sion of  the  continuous  ...  by  the  same  rule  the  infinite 
can  be  also  found  potentially  in  the  addition  of  multitude  " 
(Eng.  tr.,  I,  pp.  78-79). 

The  doctrine  of  causation  among  created  things  also 
shows  potency's  healing  virtue.  And  naturally  enough,  too ; 
since  potency  is  causa tions's  blood-relative;  a  pseudo-effi- 
cacy, a  tendency  or  capacity  to  be,  unable  to  bring  about 
its  own  fulfilment.  The  acorn,  potentially  the  oak,  cannot 
become  the  oak  until  the  agencies  of  heat,  moisture,  and 
certain  chemicals  in  the  soil  actually  come  in  contact  with 
it.  To  change  or  to  be  made  is  to  pass  from  a  state  of  po- 
tency to  actuality  —  so  reads  the  text  in  question  2,  art.  3  — 
and  this  passing  is  made  actual  by  something  which  is 
already  actual,  which  we  denominate  the  cause.  When  wood 
is  made  to  burn,  the  wood  was  combustible  and  thereby  had 
the  potency  of  burning,  yet  it  burned  not  until  touched  with 
the  flame.  But  the  potency,  though  itself  ineffective, 
bridges  that  logical  gap  between  cause  and  effect  which 
Hume  was  later  to  emphasize.  The  former  cold  and  the 
now  burning  quality  of  the  wood  are  utterly  diverse:  what 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       375 

permits  us  to  see  how  the  one  passes  into  the  other  ?  This 
office  is  performed  by  potency.  The  wood  had  its  later 
combustion  in  potentia;  the  jolt  is  smoothed  over.  And  this 
in  potentia  is  no  mere  fiction,  but  a  genuine  property  of  the 
wood;  for  what  is  not  combustible  does  not  burn,  though  a 
thousand  torches  be  applied. 

Likewise  we  find  in  the  scholastic  concept  of  being  a  syn- 
thesis wrought  by  the  same  mediation.  For  being  is  one, 
true,  and  good.  As  regards  the  union  of  being  and  good: 
St.  Thomas  affirms  that  the  perfection  of  anything  is  the 
actual  realization  of  its  potencies.  "  Everything  is  perfect 
so  far  as  it  is  actual  "  (question  5,  art.  i,  Eng.  tr.,  I,  p.  53).  A 
perfect  apple  is  one  which  contains  in  actu  all  the  tendencies 
or  capacities  proper  to  being  an  apple.  So  far  as  an  apple  by 
its  intrinsic  limitations  lacks  certain  attributes  —  conscious- 
ness, virtue,  etc.  —  so  far  it  falls  short  of  perfection  and  of 
full  being.  To  that  extent  its  being  is  nascent  or  potential. 
The  good  then  is  united  with  being  potentially  if  not  always 
actually.  Of  the  true,  the  same  holds.  As  the  Rev.  Joseph 
Rickaby,  S.J.,  succinctly  puts  it:  "every  being  must  stand  in 
the  relation  of  a  possible  object  for  intellectual  perception  " 
(General  Metaphysics,  p.  117).  Of  course,  not  everything  is 
actually  perceived;  but  whatever  is  real  would  under  suit- 
able conditions  be  witnessed.  And  when  it  is  witnessed,  it 
gives  rise  to  the  ideas  in  our  minds.  Thirdly,  being  is  the 
same  as  unity;  that  is,  a  certain  kind  of  unity.  The  unity 
which  is  the  beginning  of  number  is  not  the  sort  of  unity 
which  is  everywhere  predicable  of  being:  "  we  must  say 
that  the  one  which  is  convertible  with  being,  does  not  add 
anything  above  being;  but  that  the  one  which  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  number,  does  add  something  to  being,  belonging  to 
the genusof  quantity"  (Summa,  question  n,art.  i ;  Eng.  tr., 
I,  p.  in).  Now  as  regards  this  qualified  concept  of  unity, 


376  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

it  indeed  is  not,  like  goodness  or  truth,  sometimes  a  mere 
potency.  It  is  wholly  actual.  There  are  no  cases  of  being 
where  the  unity  (we  should  say  individuality)  fails  to  ap- 
pear. This  particular  synthesis,  then,  seems  to  differ  from 
the  two  above,  in  using  no  device  of  potency.  But  we  may 
see  in  what  manner  this  is  so:  it  is  the  exception  which 
proves  the  rule.  "  One  does  not  add  anything  to  being;  but 
it  is  only  a  negation  of  division:  for  one  means  undivided 
being.  This  is  the  very  reason  why  one  is  the  same  as 
being  .  .  .  the  being  of  anything  consists  in  undivision 
[sic] ;  and  hence  it  is  that  everything  keeps  unity  as  it  keeps 
being  "  (ibid.).  Unity,  so  far  as  in  any  sense  a  distinct  idea 
from  being,  is  negative;  the  repulsion  of  division.  Pos- 
itively considered,  it  is  the  same  as  being.  There  is  then  no 
true  synthesis  present.  We  make  the  predication,  "  Being 
is  one  or  individual,"  only  in  order  to  deny  division.  Never- 
theless, in  so  far  as  the  predicate  one  is  distinct  from  the 
subject  being,  they  must  for  our  intellect  be  two  related 
terms.  And  the  subject-predicate  relation  is  for  St.  Thomas 
a  case  of  the  act-potency  relation  (question  13,  art.  12);  so 
that  even  here,  there  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  our  intel- 
lect, though  not  objectively,  a  synthesis  under  the  mode  of 
potency. 

Consider  next  the  combination  of  determinism  with  free- 
dom. While  the  modern  thinker  views  determinism  as  the 
acknowledgment  of  the  ubiquity  of  law,  St.  Thomas  ex- 
presses it  in  religious  terms:  God's  foreknowledge  of  all 
things.  He  believes,  of  course,  in  both  God's  foreknowledge 
and  human  freedom.  The  argument  for  freedom  is,  as  we 
should  expect,  a  practical  one:  "  man  has  free-will  "  he  says 
"  otherwise  counsels,  exhortations,  commands,  prohibitions, 
rewards,  and  punishments  would  be  in  vain  "  (part  I,  ques- 
tion 83,  art.  i,  Respondeo;  Eng.  tr.,  Ill,  p.  145).  The  prob- 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       377 

lem  is  to  reconcile  man's  freedom  with  God's  foreknowledge. 
He  performs  the  synthesis  of  these  apparent  opposites  in  the 
typical  manner  (part  I,  question  14,  art.  13).  God  is 
eternal,  and  His  knowledge  sees  all  at  once  what  to  us  is 
spread  out  in  time  and  successive.  "  Although  contingent 
things  become  actual  successively,  nevertheless  God  knows 
contingent  things  not  successively,  as  they  are  in  them- 
selves, as  we  do;  but  He  knows  them  all  at  once;  because 
His  knowledge  is  measured  by  eternity,  as  is  also  His  Exist- 
ence; for  eternity  existing  all  at  once  comprises  time  (question 
i  o) .  Hence,  all  temporal  things  are  present  to  God  from  eter- 
nity ...  as  they  are  in  their  presentiality  "  (loc.  cit.,  Eng.  tr., 
I,  p.  205).  In  this  way,  then,  the  contingent  thing  may  be 
contingent,  and  yet  foreknown;  for  God's  foreknowledge  is, 
by  virtue  of  His  attribute  of  seeing  all  things  at  once,  present 
knowledge.  The  contingent  event  "  can  be  infallibly  the 
object  of  certain  knowledge,  as  for  instance  to  the  sense  of 
sight;  as  when  I  see  that  Socrates  is  (freely)  sitting  down." 
Or  when  I  am  aware  of  a  free  choice  that  at  this  moment  I 
am  making,  the  contingency  of  the  event  lies  in  its  temporal 
aspect:  "  a  contingent  thing  can  be  considered  as  it  is  in  its 
cause;  and  in  that  sense  it  is  considered  as  a  future  thing, 
and  as  a  contingent  thing  not  yet  determined.  .  .  .  Hence, 
whoever  knows  a  contingent  effect  in  its  cause  only,  has 
merely  a  conjectural  knowledge  of  it  "  (pp.  204-205).  Ac- 
cordingly, our  knowledge  of  future  contingencies  is  uncer- 
tain, and  of  present  observed  contingencies  certain;  whereas 
God's  knowledge,  being  of  the  totum  simul  sort,  sees  the 
future  contingencies  as  present  ones,  and  though  certain,  is 
quite  consistent  with  their  indetermination. 

Note  the  mode  of  this  important  synthesis.  It  is  quite 
contrary  to  the  Hegelian  spirit;  it  is  practically  grounded, 
and  it  unites  the  two  opposites  by  a  distinction  within  one 


378  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

of  them  which  reduces  that  one  to  a  qualified  form,  as  if  it 
were  potentially  true  rather  than  quite  true.  Eternity  is 
not  implied  by  time,  nor  necessity  by  contingency;  neither 
does  the  converse  implication  hold.  We  accept  both  of  the 
partisan  views  for  good  practical  reasons:  freedom,  as  we 
have  above  seen;  and  Divine  foreknowledge  as  a  con- 
sequence of  God  the  Maker  of  all  things.  But  while  the 
foreknowledge  is  accredited  without  qualification,  the  un- 
predictable free  act  is  seen  to  be  such,  as  it  were,  only  from 
a  partial  or  finite  point  of  view.  The  free  act  of  a  man  may 
be  looked  at  in  two  ways.  "  A  contingent  thing  can  be 
considered  in  two  ways;  first,  in  itself,  as  actual,  in  which 
sense  it  is  not  considered  as  a  future  thing,  but  as  a  present 
thing  "  (p.  204) :  in  this  sense  it  is  the  object  of  God's 
eternal  vision.  But  "in  another  way  ...  as  it  is  in  [re- 
spect to]  its  cause  "  (ibid.) :  in  this  way  it  is  not  determined 
by  a  previous  event,  by  anything  that  has  happened  in  the 
man's  previous  history,  or  indeed  by  anything  in  the  created 
universe  whatsoever.  The  contingent  event  or  free  act  as 
seen  by  God  —  and  His  vision  is  unqualifiedly  true  —  is 
wholly  actual  and  permits  no  alternative;  that  event  seen 
as  a  potentiality  for  the  future  is  not  actual  and  leaves  open 
genuine  alternatives.  It  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  events 
in  time,  where  we  have  potentialities  as  well  as  actualities, 
that  we  have  freedom.  The  potentiality  which  resides  in 
finite  beings  is  the  key  of  the  solution.  But  whereas  the 
Hegelian  considers  this  finite  point  of  view  to  be  mere 
"  appearance,"  and  the  Kantian  declares  it  to  be  only 
"  regulatively  true "  the  Thomist  for  practical  reasons 
grants  to  it  full  objective  truth. 

The  doctrine  of  universals  is  a  similar  kind  of  synthesis. 
Although  St.  Thomas,  like  Aristotle,  speaks  frequently  as 
if  he  were  refuting  Plato,  yet  it  would  be  unjust  to  his  doc- 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM        379 

trine,  as  to  Aristotle's,  to  overlook  the  fact  that  in  a  sense  he 
included  the  Platonic  view  of  universals.  The  universal  was 
believed  by  St.  Thomas,  as  by  Plato,  to  exist  ante  rem;  yet 
it  was  not  in  the  view  of  the  former  a  disembodied  existence, 
outside  of  every  mind.  It  existed  in  the  mind  of  God,  as 
"  exemplar  cause."  "  It  is  necessary  to  suppose  ideas  in  the 
Divine  Mind.  For  the  Greek  word  I8ta  is  in  Latin  Forma. 
Hence  by  ideas  are  understood  forms  of  things,  existing 
apart  from  things  themselves.  ...  In  all  things  not  gen- 
erated by  chance,  the  form  must  be  the  end  of  any  genera- 
tion whatsoever.  The  agent  does  not  act  on  account  of  the 
form,  except  in  so  far  as  the  likeness  of  the  form  exists  in 
himself.  ...  As  then  the  world  was  not  made  by  chance, 
but  by  God  acting  by  His  intellect  .  .  .  there  must  exist  in 
the  Divine  Mind  that  form  to  the  likeness  of  which  the 
world  was  made.  And  in  this  the  notion  of  an  idea  consists." 
(Op.  cit.,  part  I,  question  15,  art.  i,  Respondeo;  Eng.  tr.,  I, 
p.  215).  Such  was  the  qualified  acceptance  of  the  ante  rem; 
how  is  it  with  the  in  re  and  the  post  rem  ?  The  universals 
exist  post  rem  in  our  minds,  and  also  are  in  the  individual 
things  themselves;  yet  the  latter  is  true  with  some  limita- 
tions. He  says  "  the  things  which  belong  to  the  species  of  a 
material  thing,  such  as  a  stone,  or  a  man,  or  a  horse,  can  be 
thought  of  apart  from  the  individualizing  principles  which  do 
not  belong  to  the  notion  of  the  species"  (part  I,  question  85, 
art.  i;  Eng.  tr.,  Ill,  p.  181).  But  "  the  nature  itself  (the 
species)  to  which  it  occurs  to  be  understood,  abstracted 
or  considered  as  universal  is  only  in  individuals;  but  that 
it  is  understood,  abstracted  or  considered  as  universal  is  in 
the  intellect.  We  see  something  similar  to  this  in  the  senses. 
For  the  sight  sees  the  colour  of  the  apple  apart  from  its 
smell.  If  therefore  it  be  asked  where  is  the  colour  which  is 
seen  apart  from  the  smell,  it  is  quite  clear  that  the  colour 


380  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

which  is  seen  is  only  in  the  apple:  but  that  it  be  perceived 
apart  from  the  smell,  this  is  owing  to  the  sight,  forasmuch 
as  the  faculty  of  sight  receives  the  likeness  of  colour  and  not 
of  smell.  In  like  manner  humanity  understood  is  only  in 
this  or  that  man;  but  that  humanity  be  apprehended  with- 
out conditions  of  individuality,  that  is,  that  it  be  abstracted 
and  consequently  considered  as  a  universal,  occurs  to  human- 
ity inasmuch  as  it  is  brought  under  the  consideration  of  the 
intellect,  in  which  there  is  a  likeness  of  the  specific  nature, 
but  not  of  the  principles  of  individuality  "  (part  I,  question 
85,  art.  2;  Eng.  tr.,  Ill,  p.  186).  Thus  the  universal  does 
exist  post  rem  in  the  intellect,  when  the  latter  abstracts 
out  the  "  nature  "  of  the  thing;  it  exists  in  the  thing  also, 
yet  not  as  pure  universal,  but  as  a  nature  which  "  considered 
as  universal  is  in  the  intellect ";  i.  e.,  in  the  thing  it  is  a 
potential  universal.  The  device  of  potentiality  once  more 
enables  St.  Thomas  to  combine  the  opponents.  He  includes 
the  Platonic  idea  ante  rem  but  places  it  in  God's  mind ;  he 
includes  the  in  re,  reducing  it  to  a  potentiality;  the  post  rem 
alone  secures  full  credit.  We  said,  the  device  of  potentiality ; 
but  to  be  sure  the  ante  rem  view  does  not  speak  of  potencies. 
There  is  really  no  difference  in  method,  however.  Of  course 
we  could  not  include  the  ante  rem  as  a  potency,  since  in  God 
there  are  no  potencies:  it  appears  instead  as  a  part  of  the 
Divine  Nature  (the  intellect).  Plato's  ideas  are  welcomed 
but  with  reservation;  they  become  not  potencies,  but 
nevertheless  a  factor  in  God's  causation:  the  "  exemplar 
cause." 

Let  one  more  instance  suffice.  Our  own  time  has  laid 
stress  upon  the  conflict  of  subjectivism  with  objectivism; 
with  that  conflict,  in  fact,  we  ourselves  were  introduced  to 
the  battlefields  of  philosophy.  Thomism  has  combined 
these  with  ingenuity.  It  teaches  that  we  know  the  sense- 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       381 

impressions  made  on  us  by  the  objects,  as  subjectivism 
claims;  we  also  know,  as  objectivism  urges,  the  objects 
themselves  from  which  the  impressions  come.  But  ob- 
jectivism (realism)  is  given  the  higher  place.  The  objects 
are  known  immediately,  directly;  the  sense-impressions  are 
known  mediately,  by  reflection.  When  I  look  at  a  book, 
what  I  am  aware  of  is  the  book,  not  my  image  of  the  book. 
But  the  impressions  are,  in  our  usual  perception  of  the  ex- 
ternal world,  potentially  present.  Some  of  them,  indeed, 
exist  only  in  the  subjective  realm,  being  in  the  object  mere 
potentialities :  these  are  the  sensibilia  propria  or  "  secondary 
qualities."  Others  are  objectively  real  as  well  as  subjec- 
tively real:  these  are  the  sensibilia  communia  or  "  primary 
qualities."  The  shape  of  the  book  is  really  in  the  book,  and 
when  I  reflect  upon  my  experience  I  find  also  a  sense-impres- 
sion of  shape;  that  sense-impression  is  potentially  present 
in  my  direct  consciousness  of  the  book.  But  the  colour  of 
the  book  is  not  actual  but  only  potential  in  the  book;  its 
reality  consists  in  the  sense-impression  alone.  The  in- 
genuity of  this  combination  of  subjectivism  and  objectivism 
lies  in  the  kind  of  reality  which  the  sense-impressions  possess. 
They  are  the  transparent  medium  through  which  the  mind 
sees,  rather  than  the  copy  of  the  object  upon  which  alone  it 
looks.  "  Some,"  he  says,  "  have  asserted  that  our  intellec- 
tual faculties  know  only  the  impression  made  on  them ;  as, 
for  example,  that  sense  is  cognizant  only  of  the  impression 
made  on  its  own  organ.  According  to  this  theory,  the  intel- 
lect understands  only  its  own  impression,  namely,  the  intel- 
ligible species  which  it  has  received,  so  that  this  species  is 
what  is  understood.  This  is,  however,  manifestly  false  for 
two  reasons.  Firstly,  because  the  things  we  understand  are 
objects  of  science;  therefore  if  what  we  understand  is  merely 
the  intelligible  species  in  the  soul,  it  would  follow  that  every 


382  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

science  would  not  be  concerned  with  objects  outside  the 
soul,  but  only  with  the  intelligible  species  within  the  soul; 
.  .  .  Secondly,  it  is  untrue,  because  it  would  lead  to  the 
opinion  of  the  ancients  who  maintained  that  whatever  seems, 
is  true,  and  consequently  contradictories  are  true  simul- 
taneously. For  if  the  faculty  knows  its  own  impression  only, 
it  can  judge  of  that  only.  .  .  .  Thus  every  opinion  would  be 
equally  true;  in  fact,  every  sort  of  apprehension. 

u  Therefore  it  must  be  said  that  the  intelligible  species  is 
related  to  the  intellect  as  that  by  which  [italics  mine]  it 
understands.  .  .  .  But  since  the  intellect  reflects  upon 
itself,  by  such  reflection  it  understands  both  its  own  act  of 
intelligence  and  the  species  by  which  it  understands.  Thus 
the  intelligible  species  is  that  which  is  understood  second- 
arily; but  that  which  is  primarily  understood  is  the  object, 
of  which  the  species  is  the  likeness  "  (part  I,  question  85, 
art.  2,  Respondeo;  Eng.  tr.,  Ill,  pp.  184-185).  The  practical 
method  seems  fairly  evident  here.  That  we  should  by  means 
of  the  sense-impression  see  the  object  itself  is  a  simple 
straightforward  suggestion.  It  appeals  to  common  sense, 
and  is  happily  illustrated  by  every-day  vision ;  we  see  light, 
and  we  see,  through  the  light  and  by  it,  the  objects.  Never- 
theless, this  comparison  is  only  a  hint,  showing  that  it  is 
possible  to  accept  the  theory.  It  does  not  demonstrate  that 
we  must  accept  it.  It  does  not  prove  that  we  must  have 
direct  access  to  the  objects  of  vision  or  of  other  sense- 
experience.  To  be  sure,  the  Doctor  assigns  grounds  why  the 
opaqueness  of  the  impressions  cannot  be  admitted.  It  is 
"  manifestly  false  for  two  reasons,"  viz.  (i)  if  it  were  not 
false,  we  should  have  to  believe  that  science  was  concerned 
"  only  with  the  intelligible  species  within  the  soul  "  and 
(2)  if  it  were  true,  then  "  whatever  seems,  is  true  "  and  con- 
tradictions would  hold,  i.  e.,  honey  would  be  both  bitter  and 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       383 

sweet  according  to  the  mouth  of  the  taster.  (St.  Thomas's 
own  illustration,  loc.  cit.)  Now  there  is  no  logical  coercive- 
ness  in  these  reductiones  ad  absurda.  Either  alternative 
might  be  accepted;  for  either  alternative  is  subjectivism 
pure  and  simple.  He  refutes  subjectivism  by  showing  that 
it  leads  to  subjectivism.  The  nerve  of  the  argument,  one 
must  conclude,  is  the  repugnancy  of  subjectivism  to  the 
common-sense  view  that  science  is  objective  and  that  objects 
have  their  own  permanent,  consistent  characters.  Students 
of  philosophy  will  recall  that  Kant  used  almost  exactly  the 
same  argument  in  his  "  Transcendental  Deduction  of  the 
Categories  "  (in  the  first  edition  of  the  Critique).  Kant 
urged  that  objects  must  have  permanent  recognizable  attri- 
butes if  there  is  to  be  anything  deserving  the  name  of  knowl- 
edge. "  If  cinnabar  were  sometimes  red  and  sometimes 
black,  sometimes  light  and  sometimes  heavy,  if  a  man  could 
be  changed  into  now  this,  now  into  another  animal  shape, 
if  on  the  longest  day  the  fields  were  sometimes  covered  with 
fruit,  sometimes  with  ice  and  snow,  the  faculty  of  my  empir- 
ical imagination  would  never  be  in  a  position,  when  repre- 
senting red  colour,  to  think  of  heavy  cinnabar  "  (Critique  of 
Pure  Reason,  tr.  Max  Miiller,  p.  84) .  But  while  Kant  uses 
this  lever  to  pry  our  minds  over  to  the  doctrine  of  an  un- 
changing ego,  St.  Thomas  uses  it  to  fix  the  stability  of  the 
external  world.  It  is  indeed  a  matter  of  choice  which  way 
we  turn  the  lever.  But  to  turn  it  toward  objectivism  is 
doubtless  more  in  line  with  common  sense.  In  accord  with 
his  usual  way,  then,  the  scholastic  finds  a  distinction  within 
subjectivism,  viz.,  the  sense-impression  conceived  as  opaque, 
and  conceived  as  transparent,  and  freely  adopts  that  one 
of  the  alternatives  which  coheres  with  the  practical  motive. 
We  now  pass  to  estimation  of  this  great  type.  We  shall 
try  to  show  that  it  is,  in  the  main,  true  enough;  for  it  is  in 


384  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

principle  inevitable,  even  though  some  of  its  details  may 
permit  a  choice.  Yet  we  shall  be  obliged  to  confess  that  it 
has  about  it  a  certain  taint  of  exclusiveness;  it  too,  like  the 
other  types,  has  its  critical  point,  and  is  unjust  to  some 
motives  which  lie  beyond  that  point. 

What  is  the  kernel  of  the  practical  attitude  —  of  common 
sense  and  revelation  alike  ?  Whence  comes  their  over- 
whelming appeal  ?  Doubtless  the  answer  must  be  sought 
in  some  attribute  common  to  both  these  forms  and  absent 
in  all  the  other  types.  Now  the  most  outstanding  attribute 
of  this  sort  seems  to  be  dogma,  absolute  certainty,  authority. 
Common  sense  is  dogmatic;  it  claims  authority  in  its  own 
right.  The  value-attitude  is  dogmatic;  if  something  feels 
good  it  is  good  and  needs  no  demonstration  thereof.  Reason 
may  err  and  has  often  done  so:  witness  the  changes  in 
physical  science.  But  common  sense  is  relatively  per- 
manent; as  it  were  a  last  court  of  appeal.  And  the  same  is 
true  of  revelation.  It  knows  no  change,  even  as  faith  is 
unshakable  certainty.  The  practical  attitude  then  is  the 
attitude  which  accepts  authority.  And  if  any  one  desires  a 
reason,  why  it  should  do  so,  it  is  ready  to  supply  one;  for  it 
does  not  disdain  reason,  as  it  admires  all  human  goods.  For 
successful  living,  certainty  is  necessary.  Some  hazard, 
some  risk,  may  be  desirable,  if  we  are  not  to  become  soft 
creatures;  but  on  the  whole  and  in  fundamentals  there 
must  be  unshaken  certitude.  Action  is  impossible  without 
it;  I  cannot  essay  to  jump  the  narrowest  ditch  without 
trusting  my  legs.  Men  cannot  treat  with  one  another,  unless 
they  agree  as  to  the  words  they  use,  the  main  facts  of  life, 
the  principles  of  conduct.  Organized  institutions,  so  neces- 
sary to  the  safety  of  society,  must  have  a  fund  of  certainty 
in  their  articles.  Religion  cannot  thrive  in  an  atmosphere  of 
doubt,  and  as  human  nature  is  constituted,  morality  cannot 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       385 

be  kept  up  without  a  fixed  system  of  beliefs  to  support  it. 
Life  needs  dogma.  "  One  of  the  most  indispensable  elements 
of  any  society  intended  to  last  is  authority]  besides  being  the 
moral  bond  which  holds  the  members  together  it  presides 
over  them  all,  incites,  moderates,  directs,  and  reforms, 
according  as  it  is  necessary  for  the  good  of  all  or  the  individ- 
ual. Thus  in  every  society  authority  is  invested  with  certain 
prerogatives  proportioned  to  the  end  to  be  attained  by  its 
subjects  "  (De  Vivier,  Christian  Apologetics,  p.  303).  And 
we  might  add  the  case  of  military  organizations.  Thus  the 
practical  attitude,  certain  of  its  own  claims,  yet  is  willing  to 
justify  them  to  those  who  doubt.  And  those  claims  are 
summed  up  in  four  words:  the  trustworthiness  of  authority. 

But  as  soon  as  the  phrase  is  uttered,  we  are  thrown  open 
to  doubt.  What  authority  are  we  to  trust  ?  Not  all,  surely; 
for  they  differ.  And  if  we  decide  which  we  are  to  trust,  we 
decide  by  comparison,  by  reflection,  by  considerations  of 
origin,  or  by  fruits;  all  of  which  is  reasoning.  And  the  sanc- 
tion of  the  authority  is  thereby  reduced  to  reason,  which  sub- 
verts authority.  So  it  seems  that  no  authority  is  sufficient 
unto  itself. 

Nevertheless,  the  tests  which  our  reason  applies  are  them- 
selves based  upon  authority.  Logic  has  its  laws  of  thought, 
and  they  are  not  demonstrated.  They  come  to  us  clothed 
with  authority  —  a  truth  which  we  found  mysticism  wit- 
nessing in  its  own  way.  We  cannot  but  accept  them  in 
actual  thinking,  however  much  we  may  theoretically  doubt 
them  or  image  a  world  in  which  they  do  not  hold.  "  If  A 
implies  B  and  B  implies  C,  then  A  implies  C  " :  this  rule  we 
cannot  doubt.  We  may  justify  it  by  appealing  to  common 
sense  or  the  natural  light,  or  other  equivalent  phrase;  but 
that  only  means  that  the  thing  comes  to  us  as  true  in  its  own 
right.  Yes,  we  must  admit  that  the  rationalist  bows  before 


386  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

his  special  kind  of  dogma  as  faithfully,  or  as  slavishly,  as 
does  the  religious  devotee  before  his  kind.  The  rationalist 
calls  his  dogma  an  axiom,  the  devotee  dubs  his  a  revelation. 
But  the  axioms  are  no  more  demonstrated  than  the  revela- 
tions; they  are  accepted  as  of  themselves  valid.  To  be  sure, 
some  say  that  the  rationalist's  axioms  are  on  a  very  different 
plane  from  any  others;  for  they  are  verifiable,  which  no 
other  dogmas  are.  But  let  us  see.  It  is  true  that  the  former 
"  work  ";  they  yield  conclusions  which  are  useful  to  science 
and  to  life.  But  why  is  that  a  confirmation  of  the  axioms  ? 
Only  because  of  another  axiom,  viz.,  that  the  coherence  of 
our  axioms  with  one  another  and  with  experience  is  a  mark 
of  truth.  There  is  no  proof  that  the  test  is  a  sound  one ;  nor 
does  it  need  proof,  for  it  has  authority.  And  wherein  is  one 
set  of  dogmas  better  than  another  ? 

But  not  reason  only  has  its  dogmas;  sense-observation 
has,  in  the  eyes  of  men,  an  authority  of  its  own.  What  we 
hear,  see,  or  touch  appears  irresistibly  real.  It  is  always 
accepted,  unless  it  turns  out  to  conflict  with  other  things 
which  we  hear,  see,  or  touch.  That  is  why  the  philosophy 
of  "  common  sense  "  is  realistic;  for  common  sense  is  the 
name  which  authority  assumes  when  conversant  with  every- 
day matters.  And  it  is  no  refutation  to  urge  that  because 
we  are  sometimes  misled  by  our  senses,  their  authority  is  no 
authority.  We  are  sometimes  misled  by  our  reasonings  also; 
perhaps  all  the  illusions  of  sense  are  due  to  the  falsity  of  our 
inference  from  the  sense-data.  Nevertheless  we  trust  rea- 
soning, and  we  say  that  the  fault  lies  not  in  the  dogmatic 
principles  upon  which  we  reason,  but  in  our  application  of 
these  principles.  So  too  we  believe  that  the  cure  for  faulty 
sense-observation  is  further  sense-observation. 

And  much  the  same  is  true  of  memory.  We  trust  our 
memory,  and  on  the  whole  we  have  to  trust  it.  To  be  sure 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       387 

it  is  often  mistaken,  yet  we  test  it  in  turn  by  more  memory. 
I  declare  that  I  answered  my  friend's  letter  this  morning, 
and  if  I  would  confirm  the  assertion,  I  recall  the  time  when 
I  did  it,  the  things  I  wrote,  the  affixing  of  the  stamp,  the 
posting  of  the  letter.  And  though  we  frequently  test  re- 
membrance by  its  coherence  with  present  facts  —  as  if  I 
should  learn  that  my  friend  received  the  letter  —  yet  many 
remembered  events  are  accepted  in  their  own  right;  and 
justly  so,  so  clearly  are  they  recalled  to  our  minds.  In 
action,  too,  we  accept  authority.  We  take  on  faith,  in  order 
to  act,  what  is  far  from  being  demonstrated  to  us;  we  cross 
a  city  street  thronged  with  rushing  motor  cars,  in  confidence 
that  our  muscles  will  not  refuse  to  work;  we  trust  the 
plumber  not  to  stuff  our  drain-pipes  and  the  dentist  not  to 
drill  new  holes  in  our  teeth.  Of  course  we  are  sometimes 
betrayed;  but  life  necessitates  the  making  of  assumptions. 
It  is  impossible,  in  short,  to  conduct  anything,  muscular 
action,  science,  or  private  meditation,  without  leaning  upon 
dogma  of  one  sort  or  another. 

Now  the  type  we  are  here  studying,  the  "  practical  syn- 
thesis," claims,  if  our  reduction  is  correct,  that  the  real 
force  which  binds  the  partisan  views  together  is  the  author- 
itative revelation,  given  to  the  man  who  conducts  his  life, 
that  they  are  so  bound.  This  revelation,  as  we  have  seen,  is 
vouchsafed  in  ordinary  matters  under  the  title  "  common 
sense  "  or  "  the  requirements  of  practical  life,"  and  in 
supramundane  matters  under  the  title  of  Christian  dogma. 
Our  question  is,  can  these  particular  kinds  of  authority  be 
accredited  ?  On  the  whole,  the  former  kind  has  been  ac- 
cepted by  men  as  valid.  Certain  specialists,  e.  g.,  phi- 
losophers, have  been  the  only  ones  to  demand  that  common 
sense  produce  its  credentials.  But  it  seems  that  a  little 
consideration  would  reveal  those  credentials;  for  the  author- 


388  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

ity  of  common  sense  rests  on  the  fact  that  its  dogmas  are 
part  and  parcel  of  the  conduct  of  life.  If  a  doctrine  is  indis- 
pensable to  conduct,  it  must  be  accepted;  for  conduct  is 
unavoidable.  We  may  disagree  as  to  what  doctrines  are 
indispensable,  but  the  method,  the  criterion,  is  undeniably 
sound.  If  it  were  true  that  I  could  not  act  in  any  way  for  a 
single  minute  without  tacitly  supposing  that  God  exists, 
then  that  is  a  proof  of  God's  existence  and  no  scientific 
demonstration  or  logical  implication  thereof  is  needed.  And 
so  it  is  in  regard  to  the  causal  relation:  we  do  assume  in 
practice  that  the  effect  must  follow  the  cause.  Rationalism, 
speaking  through  the  mouth  of  Hume,  found  no  justification 
of  their  necessary  connection.  Yet  all  men  assume  it,  for 
they  treat  effects  as  inevitable:  they  avoid  poisons,  ex- 
plosives, and  fire  because  they  feel  that  disaster  is  certain  to 
follow  such.  Whatever  they  may  write  on  paper  about  this 
necessity,  they  do  practically  believe  in  it,  because  it  is  in- 
volved in  conduct.  And  thus  the  authority  of  most  of  the 
categories  of  common  sense  is  in  general  valid.  But  the 
validity  of  the  other  kind,  that  of  Christian  dogma,  is  not  so 
directly  evident.  Its  appeal  is  at  any  rate  less  immediate; 
so  many  men  have  seemed  to  conduct  their  lives  success- 
fully while  doubting  or  disbelieving  it.  Such  dogmas  as  the 
Trinity,  the  Incarnation,  the  Creation,  do  not  at  once  appear 
indispensable  to  our  living.  Accordingly,  it  becomes  our 
duty  to  ask  for  the  credentials  of  religious  dogma.  Or  we 
may  say,  for  the  credentials  of  religious  faith;  for  faith  and 
dogma  are  correlative.  But  further:  since  dogmas  cannot 
be  wavering  and  uncertain  pronouncements,  or  admit  of  any 
vacillation  in  their  interpretation,  the  authority  of  dogma 
implies  some  organ  which  states  and  interprets  the  dogma 
with  authority;  and  this  means  with  infallibility,  since 
authority  is  no  longer  authority  if  it  be  open  to  question. 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       389 

Such  an  organ  cannot  be  anything  but  an  infallible  Church 
—  infallible,  that  is,  in  matters  of  religious  belief.  Our 
problem  then  is,  to  ask  for  the  credentials  of  an  infallible 
Church.  If  we  could  but  find  them  and  be  assured  of  their 
sufficiency,  then  the  "  practical  synthesis  "  which  has  been 
effected  under  its  guidance  would  be  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses the  final  philosophic  system,  and  our  quest  would  be 
ended. 

We  say,  our  quest'would  be  ended;  for  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  present  type  of  philosophy  has  that  connection  with 
the  detail  of  life,  the  specific  applicability,  which  in  Chapter 
I  we  found  to  be  the  original  intention  of  philosophy.  In 
this  respect  it  towers  head  and  shoulders  above  every  other 
type  we  have  studied.  Not  one  of  them  presented  anything 
but  the  meagrest  of  outlines.  See,  for  example,  the  con- 
trast between  the  absolutist  synthesis  and  the  practical. 
The  Absolute,  present  everywhere,  makes  all  the  difference 
in  the  world  to  each  particular  experience  of  ours,  and  since 
extremes  meet  thereby  makes  no  difference.  By  its  utter 
generality  it  lacks  the  specific  quality  which  would  make  it 
count.  On  the  other  hand,  the  practical  system  influences, 
in  directly  verifiable  ways,  the  minutest  detail  of  its  votary's 
life.  He  gets  on  his  knees  to  pray,  he  goes  to  church,  he 
gives  his  money,  he  feels  a  steady  flame  of  faith,  he  organizes 
his  fellows  in  religious  bands,  ministers  to  the  poor,  etc.  Of 
course,  the  religious  frequently  fall  from  grace;  but  often 
they  remain  true,  and  that  is  enough  to  save  the  system. 
The  system  is  efficacious;  it  is  open  to  utilization,  it  is 
turned  to  practical  application,  it  is  the  explanation,  even, 
of  certain  events  (the  creation,  etc.).  In  Hegelianism,  the 
whole  is  divorced  from  the  other  aspects;  in  Thomism,  it  is 
wedded  to  them.  In  examining  its  credentials,  then,  we 
have  a  very  great  deal  at  stake.  So  full  and  concrete  a  map 


390  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

of  the  universe  was  never  before  offered;  and  if  we  cannot 
adhere  to  it  we  may  indeed  despair  of  philosophic  truth. 

There  is,  first,  an  antecedent  probability  that  there  are 
such  credentials.  For  if  it  is  the  case  that  authority  is 
welded  into  the  very  structure  of  knowledge  itself,  does  it 
not  seem  probable  that  in  every  distinct  field  of  inquiry  it 
will  be  found  at  work,  furnishing  as  it  were  the  matter 
which  our  reason  is  to  arrange  in  systematic  logical  form  ? 
In  the  material  world  we  find  the  sense-data  coming  before 
us  clothed  with  self -evidence;  these  we  work  over  and  refine 
upon  until  we  have  constituted  science.  In  the  abstract 
world  of  ideal  forms,  we  find  certain  ultimate  propositions 
invested  with  certainty,  viz.,  the  axioms  of  all  reasoning; 
upon  these  we  build  the  structure  known  as  logic.  In  the 
moral  sphere,  also,  we  discover  some  principles  which  must 
be  assumed  as  the  basis  of  all  moral  precepts,  viz.,  that  ful- 
ness of  life  is  desirable,  truth-telling  required,  justice  an 
end.  Is  it  not  then  probable  that  there  are  open  to  man 
certain  fixed  truths  in  the  field  of  religious  inquiry  ?  Why 
may  there  not  be  a  power  of  insight  adapted  to  see  truths  in 
this  region,  just  as  the  sense-organs  are  adapted  to  see 
truths  in  the  material  world,  the  intellect  to  see  them  in  the 
world  of  abstract  forms,  etc.  ?  The  religious  devotee  asserts 
that  there  is  such  a  power;  that  the  founder  of  his  religion 
possessed  it.  That  founder's  declarations  are  hence  clothed 
with  authority;  and  the  Church,  which  hands  them  on  at 
his  command,  in  so  far  claims  a  like  authority. 

The  particular  kind  of  authority  which  should  give  out 
religious  truth,  or  philosophic  truth,  in  anything  like  a  com- 
plete or  systematic  form,  is  certainly  not  found  within  the 
consciousness  of  the  average  human  being.  However  the 
democratic  ideal  may  insist  that  each  man  should  judge  for 
himself  in  religion,  it  is  still  the  plain  fact  that  most  men 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       391 

have  neither  the  time  nor  the  inclination  to  do  so.  The 
dogmas  of  common  sense  are  within  the  reach  of  all,  and 
after  some  reflection  the  dogmas  of  reason  also;  any  one  can 
verify  them  for  himself  by  a  little  training.  But  for  informa- 
tion in  religious  matters  we  have  always  had  to  look  to 
exceptional  persons;  to  some  one  or  more  who  were  in- 
dividuals of  surpassing  personal  force.  Whether  we  like  it 
or  not,  this  is  the  fact.  Are  we  not  justified  in  so  doing  ?  Is 
it  not  natural  and  right  that  there  be  individuals  whose 
utterances  and  teachings  come  from  their  lips  with  a  certain 
power,  compelling  in  their  hearers  belief  ?  It  is  said  that 
Jesus  spoke  with  authority,  and  not  as  the  scribes.  Should 
we  then  accept  his  sayings  just  because  they  are  his  sayings, 
without  first  verifying  them  by  our  own  independent  re- 
flection ?  Can  the  credentials  of  the  Church  be  the  ipse 
dixit  of  its  first  teacher  ? 

Now  the  ipse  dixit  form  of  authority  is  undoubtedly  very 
widely  accredited;  more  widely  perhaps  than  a  Protestant 
likes  to  admit.  We  all  do  assign  more  weight  to  the  casual 
assertions  of  some  people,  than  to  the  most  earnest  assevera- 
tions of  others.  Often  it  is  because  we  know  the  former  to 
be  experts.  The  guess  of  a  famous  scientist,  in  regard  to  the 
cause  of  some  new  natural  phenomenon,  is  to  be  preferred 
to  the  conviction  of  the  untrained.  But  this  authority  has 
its  source  in  our  reason  only.  We  know  the  expert  to  be 
competent;  his  competence  has  been  tested  again  and 
again.  On  the  other  hand,  we  cannot  deny  that  mere  con- 
viction itself  is  convincing.  A  man  may  state  his  beliefs  so 
commandingly  that  we  dare  not  question  them,  even  in  our 
thoughts.  Thus  the  orator  sweeps  us  off  our  feet;  thus  the 
preacher  makes  converts.  There  is  little  if  any  reason  in  it; 
belief  is  immediate  and  irresistible.  Such  belief,  however, 
seldom  persists  long  unless  corroborated  by  reflection.  We 


392  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

do  not  speak  here  of  mystical  experiences,  where  the  devotee 
has  some  independent  personal  data  which  determine  his 
belief,  but  only  of  beliefs  which  are  fixed  by  the  words  of 
another. 

But  there  is  a  further  way  in  which  personal  authority  is 
found.  The  mere  testimony  of  a  common  man  is  of  so  me 
weight,  however  slight.  In  the  law-courts  we  call  witnesses 
to  the  stand,  and  the  presumption  is  in  favour  of  their  truth; 
cross-examination  is  required  if  it  is  to  be  impugned.  Like 
the  primitive  credulity  of  the  child,  is  the  ultimate  pre- 
sumption of  the  truth  of  a  person's  assertion.  And  even  in 
science,  that  lair  of  reason,  the  ipse  dixit  is  never  wholly 
reduced  to  reason.  For  one  savant's  results  must  be  con- 
firmed by  others.  Why  should  this  social  motive  influence  us, 
if  not  because  each  man's  testimony  is  of  independent  value 
in  itself  ?  Could  a  sum  of  nothings  make  up  a  positive 
quantum  of  confirmation  ?  It  is  true  that  all  testimony  is 
subject  to  revision;  but  to  deny  that  it  has  any  authority 
of  its  own  is  like  denying  that  a  billiard-ball  moves  because 
its  motion  can  be  stopped.  Of  course  one  person's  assertions 
may  be  demolished  by  reasons;  but  these  reasons  them- 
selves gain  authority  in  that  all,  or  most,  men  agree  upon 
them.  The  social  motive,  so  prominent  in  all  that  we  think 
and  do  today,  is  a  clear  instance  of  the  ipse  dixit  form  of 
authority.*  But  nevertheless  this  kind  is  in  any  particular 
case  liable  to  refutation.  The  sort  of  authority  we  are  seek- 
ing is  irrefutable.  It  is  not  found  in  the  scientific  expert's 
judgment,  in  the  zealot's  impressive  utterance,  in  the  social 
verdict.  Each  and  all  of  these  is  liable  to  error.  They  must 
be  validated  by  reflection,  or  their  power  is  lost.  Is  there 
then  any  sort  of  ipse  dixit  left,  which  possesses  finality, 

*  Thomas  Reid  explicitly  states  this,  Hamilton's  ed.  I,  p.  440,  Intellectual 
Powers,  Essay  6,  ch.  4. 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       393 

independent  of  subsequent  confirmation  by  thought  ?  When 
we  look  more  closely  at  the  foundations  of  Catholicism,  it 
seems  at  first  as  if  there  were  none.  For  the  Church  does 
not  rest  content  with  pointing  to  the  Scriptures  and  its  own 
decrees.  It  gives  a  long  array  of  reasoned  evidence.  Never- 
theless, if  we  look  more  closely  still,  we  shall  find  the  ipse 
dixit  standing  fully  armed  and  alone,  within  the  citadel  of 
its  elaborate  fortress. 

The  Church,  we  say,  has  built  up  a  body  of  rational  argu- 
ment in  favour  of  its  authority :  the  words  of  Jesus  are  taken 
to  be  divine  revelation,  i.  e.,  infallible,  because  Jesus  himself 
showed  evidences  of  His  supernatural  and  divine  character 
-  to  wit,  his  miracles.  "  The  Christian  religion  stands  or 
falls  with  miracles.  They  formed  an  integral  part  of  our 
Lord's  ministry;  they  are  the  sureties  of  His  stupendous 
claims  ..."  (Miracles  and  Modern  Thought,  by  the  Very 
Rev.  Humphrey  Moynihan,  S.T.D.,  in  The  Ecclesiastical 
Review,  54,  p.  292.  Italics  mine).  And  "if  they  (the 
miracles)  are  torn  from  that  story  and  eliminated  from  that 
life,  the  Gospels  become  a  heap  of  ruins  and  Christ  Himself 
almost  a  mythical  personage  "  (ibid.}.  Reason  is  then,  so 
far,  in  a  general  way  the  foundation  of  religious  authority; 
where  by  reason  we  mean  observation  of  the  consequences, 
the  working,  the  attendant  circumstances,  of  a  belief  in 
dogma.  The  New  Testament  itself  advocates  such  a  use  of 
reason.  "  Believe  not  every  spirit,  but  try  the  spirits  if  they 
be  of  God;  because  many  false  prophets  are  gone  out  into 
the  world"  (I  John,  IV.  i).  And  Catholicism  emphasizes 
the  role  of  reason  as  "  demonstrating  the  truth  of  the  Gospel, 
that  is,  establishing  with  certainty  the  foundations  of  faith 
by  demonstrating  that  it  is  perfectly  rational,  legitimate, 
and  indispensable  to  believe  "  (Rev.  W.  De  Vivier,  S.J., 
Christian  Apologetics  (ed.  by  Rt.  Rev.  S.  G.  Messmer), 


394  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

p.  41).  Thus".  .  .  suppose  men  of  irreproachable  probity 
assure  me  that  they  have  heard  these  propositions  [dogmas] 
from  the  mouth  of  God,  suppose  I  am  certain  that  they 
speak  without  any  personal  interest  whatever;  nay,  more, 
for  the  truth  which  they  proclaim  they  suffer  insults,  per- 
secution and  death  itself,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  their 
teaching  is  confirmed  by  striking  and  incontestable  miracles. 
Would  it  not  be  unreasonable,  under  these  circumstances, 
to  refuse  my  assent  to  their  doctrines  ?  .  .  .  Revelation 
...  is  a  fact  removed  from  us  by  many  centuries.  Hence 
it  is  ...  testimony  which  enables  us  to  attain  certain 
knowledge  of  revelation  and,  consequently,  to  demonstrate 
the  foundations  of  faith"  (op.  cit.,  pp.  48-49).  But  testi- 
mony is,  after  all,  to  be  judged  by  scientific  standards;  the 
basis  is  a  rational  one.  It  would  seem  that  a  character  so 
lofty,  so  powerful,  so  consistent,  as  that  of  Jesus  could  hardly 
have  been  invented,  either  by  one  man  or  by  a  group  of 
men:  antecedent  probability  is  against  the  falsity  of  the 
testimony.  The  magnitude  of  his  personality,  the  unusual 
character  of  his  doctrine,  and  the  degree  of  concurrence  of 
the  witnesses,  combine  to  render  fraud  or  mistake  on  the 
main  points  extremely  unlikely.  "  To  invent  a  Newton, 
one  would  have  to  be  a  Newton  himself.  What  man  could 
invent  a  person  like  Jesus  ?  Jesus  alone  could  do  it." 
(Parker,  quoted  in  op.  cit.,  p.  149.)  It  is  of  course  possible 
to  doubt;  but  if  the  same  testimony  were  offered  in  regard 
to  any  other  allegation,  the  doubt  would  be  deemed  an  un- 
reasonable one.  And  the  testimony  gains  in  weight  from  the 
fact  that  it  is,  in  a  sense,  indirect.  Things  have  happened 
which  constitute  circumstantial  evidence  that  Jesus  was 
superhuman.  Such,  it  is  said,  are  the  miracles,  the  earlier 
prophecies  of  his  coming,  his  own  prophecies  of  his  fate  and 
the  success  of  his  religion,  his  own  character,  his  resurrection, 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       395 

the  establishment  and  duration  of  Christianity  itself,  and  in 
particular  of  the  Catholic  Church,  which  has  outlasted  any 
other  institution  of  similar  magnitude  and  is  in  essentials 
unchanged,  the  fortitude  and  endurance  of  the  martyrs 
themselves,  the  practical  fruits  of  Christianity  in  promoting 
order,  morality,  peace,  and  other  factors  of  civilization. 
Moreover,  no  other  religion,  such  as  Buddhism,  Moham- 
medanism, etc.,  presents  such  a  massive  array  of  arguments. 
Each  one  may  allege  something,  viz.,  miracles,  duration; 
but  none  has  anything  like  the  above  summation  of  distinct 
evidences,  giving  mutual  corroboration.  And  each  of  the 
great  religions  is  no  doubt  to  a  large  extent  true;  though 
lacking  the  perfection  to  which  the  evidences  of  Christianity 
point.  So  reasons  the  Catholic.  "...  we  believe  in  Him 
because  the  Divinity  He  claimed  rests  upon  the  concurrent 
testimony  of  His  miracles,  His  prophecies,  His  personal 
character,  the  nature  of  His  doctrine,  the  marvellous  propa- 
gation of  His  teaching  in  spite  of  its  running  counter  to 
flesh  and  blood,  the  united  testimony  of  thousands  of  mar- 
tyrs, the  stories  of  countless  saints  who  for  His  sake  have  led 
heroic  lives,  the  history  of  the  Church  herself  since  the 
Crucifixion,  and,  perhaps  more  remarkable  than  any,  the 
history  of  the  papacy  from  St.  Peter  to  Pius  X.  These 
testimonies  are  unanimous;  they  all  point  in  one  direc- 
tion, they  are  of  every  age,  they  are  clear  and  simple, 
and  are  within  the  grasp  of  the  humblest  intelligence." 
(The  Catholic  Encyclopedia,  5,  art.  Faith,  IV,  Motives  of 
Credibility.) 

Does  the  principle  of  authority  then  vanish  into  reason, 
even  for  the  Catholic  ?  No :  further  search  discloses  some- 
thing more  than  these  arguments.  The  reasons  above  given 
may  incline  one  to  trust  the  authority  in  question,  but  of 
themselves  they  are  not  enough  to  give  certitude.  No  prob- 


396  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

ability  based  upon  reasoning,  however  strong,  has  the  con- 
vincing force  of  sight  or  touch;  one  may  even  demonstrate 
most  perfectly  that  the  planet  is  there  in  the  heavens,  but 
unless  he  consents  to  look  in  the  telescope  and  sees  the  planet, 
he  has  not  the  highest  degree  of  certainty.  Hence  it  is  that 
science  insists  upon  experimental  confirmation  of  its  reason- 
ings. And  so  it  is  here.  The  conviction  of  the  infallibility 
of  revealed  religion  is  gained  only  when  we  by  a  free  act  of 
will  assent  to  the  dogmas.  And  even  this  act  of  will  is  not 
sufficient  of  itself.  But,  owing  to  Divine  grace,  it  is  fol- 
lowed by  a  faith,  a  "  certitude  "  as  Newman  calls  it,  of  the 
absolute  truth  of  the  revelation ;  just  as  the  consent  to  look 
in  the  telescope  is  followed  by  the  indubitable  sight  of  the 
heavenly  body.  "...  in  the  minds  of  many,  faith  is  re- 
garded as  a  more  or  less  necessary  consequence  of  a  careful 
study  of  the  motives  of  credibility  [reasonings],  a  view  which 
the  Vatican  council  condemns  expressly  ..."  "  The 
Church  has  twice  condemned  the  view  that  faith  ultimately 
rests  on  accumulation  of  probabilities."  "  It  is  the  free  gift 
of  God."  (Op.  cit.,  V,  Analysis  of  the  Act  of  Faith  from  the 
Subjective  Standpoint.)  Faith  is,  in  St.  Thomas'  words,  "  an 
act  of  the  intellect  assenting  to  a  Divine  truth  owing  to  a 
movement  of  the  will,  which  is  itself  moved  by  the  grace  of 
God  "  (Summa  Theologica,  part  II,  question  2,  art.  2). 

But  this  "  free  gift  of  God  "  to  him  who  wills  to  assent, 
this  "  Divine  supernatural  faith  "  is  not  rational  insight. 
The  dogma  to  which  we  assent  is  not  necessarily  made 
clear  and  intelligible  to  the  light  of  reason,  by  our  faith  in 
it.  If  that  were  so,  the  whole  matter  would  once  more  be 
reduced  to  reason.  "  Supernatural  grace  moves  the  will, 
which,  having  now  a  supernatural  good  put  before  it, 
moves  the  intellect  to  assent  to  what  it  does  not  understand" 
(Encyclopedia,  art.  Faith,  ibid.). 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       397 

The  practical  motive  then,  the  pure  ipse  dixit,  reappears 
at  the  end.  "...  the  proposition  [dogma]  itself  does  not 
compel  our  assent,  since  it  is  not  intrinsically  evident,  but 
there  remains  the  fact  that  only  on  condition  of  our  assent  to 
it  shall  we  have  what  the  human  soul  naturally  yearns  for,  viz., 
the  possession  of  God,  Who  is,  as  both  reason  and  authority 
declare,  our  ultimate  end;  '  He  that  believeth  and  is  bap- 
tized, shall  be  saved.  .  .  .'  But  .  .  .  the  will  needs  a  special 
grace  from  God,  in  order  that  it  may  tend  to  that  supernatural 
good  which  is  eternal  life  "  (ibid.;  the  italics  are  my  own). 
Yet  the  practical  motive  is  conceived  throughout  in  no 
subjective  sense;  it  gives  insight  into  reality.  Faith  is  not 
arbitrary,  but  the  way  is  prepared  most  carefully  by  reasons. 
There  is  no  question  of  a  leap  in  the  dark.  No  subjective 
affirmation  decides,  as  with  Kant.  The  assent  of  the  will 
does  not  end  the  story.  We  cannot  believe  merely  at  will. 
Supernatural  grace  is  needed  to  show  us,  to  reveal  the  truth 
of  the  dogma,  even  though  not  to  explain  that  truth.  So  the 
planet  reveals  itself  to  him  who  consents  to  look  in  the  tele- 
scope, though  the  gazer  may  or  may  not  understand  how 
the  planet  can  be  there  —  for  it  may  contradict  all  his  pre- 
vious theories.  "...  supernatural  grace  .  .  .  moves  the 
intellect  to  assent  to  what  it  does  not  understand  "  (quoted 
above). 

In  the  end,  then,  authority  is  authority  from  a  delicately 
balanced  complex  of  motives,  of  which  the  clinching  force 
lies  in  the  last  step;  —  a  step  taken  by  will  and  by  will  alone. 
The  will  is  free  to  yield  or  not  to  yield  to  the  inducements  of 
reason.  Reason  is  not  strong  enough  to  compel  it.  If  it 
decides  to  yield,  revelation  crowns  its  act;  but  this  is  a 
matter  of  values,  of  practical  considerations:  "  Super- 
natural grace  moves  the  will,  which,  having  now  a  super- 
natural good  put  before  it,  moves  the  intellect  to  assent  .  .  .  " 


398  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

(italics  mine).  Religious  dogma  convinces  the  head  by 
working  upon  the  heart  and  the  hand.  The  practical  mo- 
tive stands  upon  its  own  feet,  unaided,  in  the  crucial  moment 
when  the  ipse  dixit,  the  word  of  Jesus  or  the  Church,  is 
accepted. 

What  then  shall  we  say  of  the  justice  of  its  claim  ?  We 
do  not  hesitate  to  affirm  that  it  is  in  principle  sound.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  pure  theory,  it  would  not  seem  so;  but 
life  is  not  pure  theory.  If  conduct  is  three-fourths  of  it,  and 
feeling  some  fraction  also,  it  would  seem  that  in  our  trans- 
actions with  reality  the  intellect  plays  a  minor  role.  And 
how  then  should  the  message  of  these  other  organs  be 
denied  ?  It  is  not  that  practical  needs  urge  us  to  believe 
certain  things  because  we  wish  to  believe  them;  rather 
because  we  cannot,  if  we  squarely  face  the  practical  situa- 
tion —  as  the  theorist  does  not  —  help  believing  them.  As 
human  nature  actually  is,  we  cannot,  in  the  majority  of 
life's  exigencies,  wait  for  the  verdict  of  science  or  of  reason. 
Much  as  we  should  like  to  do  so,  a  time  far  beyond  what  we 
have  at  our  disposal  would  be  required.  The  demands  of 
conduct  are  insistent;  control  of  the  passions  of  men  must 
be  firmly  established  in  some  organized  system;  science, 
extending  but  little  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  physical,  and 
even  varying  from  age  to  age  within  those  bounds,  would  be 
but  a  futile  guide  in  questions  of  the  ultimate  values.  We 
must  perforce  appeal,  in  the  common  conduct  of  life,  to 
some  immediate  authority.  And  as  we  have  already  suffi- 
ciently seen,  we  do  so.  Men  abide  by  common  sense  in 
mundane  matters;  and  on  the  whole,  in  the  ultimate  ques- 
tions, men  accept  some  religious  dogma  or  other,  whether 
dictated  by  the  heart's  claims  or  by  some  potent  person- 
ality; and  in  neither  realm  have  men  stopped  to  demon- 
strate. The  Catholic  Church  is  simply  the  strictly  logical 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       399 

conclusion  in  matters  of  religion,  of  the  common  human  atti- 
tude; and  that  is  to  say,  of  the  inevitable  attitude.  Faith 
we  must  have,  and  do  have.  If  life  is  a  war  upon  evil,  and 
the  church  life's  army,  the  soldiers  must  implicitly  obey 
their  commanders. 

But  with  all  this,  there  is  no  ground  for  excluding  reason 
at  the  end.  There  will  always  be  something  unsatisfactory 
about  dogmas  which  are  not  explained,  deduced,  or  seen  to 
cohere  with  the  structure  of  the  world  as  a  whole.  It  may 
be  necessary  for  us  to  believe  them,  and  they  may  be  most 
unquestionably  known  to  be  true;  but  that  is  the  case  with 
the  phenomena  of  electricity  and  gravitation,  which  yet  we 
strive  to  account  for.  The  practical  attitude  has  its  own  way 
of  going  straight  to  truth,  and  it  is  simply  narrow-minded 
to  deny  this,  or  to  undervalue  it.  In  fact,  no  man  can  live 
long  without  some  use  of  it.  But  we  cannot  rest  satisfied  to 
register  a  collection  of  truths.  We  desire  to  understand 
them;  and  dogma,  however  indispensable,  does  not  meet 
that  desire.  This  is  as  true  of  the  dogmas  of  common  sense 
as  of  religious  creeds;  it  is  as  true  of  the  revelations  of  sense- 
observation  and  memory  as  of  the  insights  of  the  artist.  All 
these  authorities  must  be  trusted,  but  the  goal  is  not  reached 
until  authority  joins  hands  with  reason,  and  they  are  seen  to 
be  intrinsically  self-evident  or  implied  in  what  is  so.  The 
aspiration  to  explain  why  there  is  a  solar  system,  why  there 
is  gravitation,  why  God  is  three  Persons,  why  Jesus  com- 
manded non-resistance  —  this  aspiration  is  as  much  a  need 
of  life  as  the  needs  of  faith  and  of  conduct.  It  is  not  so  im- 
portunate, for  it  is  not  a  prerequisite  of  living;  it  is  patient 
rather,  and  enduring.  Indeed,  no  other  need  surpasses  it  in 
endurance.  And  as  long  as  any  religious  dogma  remains 
mysterious,  so  long  will  our  reason  protest  at  being  excluded, 
and  the  sense  of  injustice  will  lead  to  indignation  and  revolt. 


400  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

We  shall  then  leap  to  the  other  extreme,  Unitarianism ;  the 
assertion  of  the  exclusive  right  of  private  judgment.  For 
Unitarianism  is  only  pure  and  consistent  rationalism  in 
religion. 

Not  only  in  the  dogmatic  part  of  the  practical  philosophy 
do  we  trace  this  fissure;  the  crack  runs  into  the  reasoned 
portions.  The  proof  of  God,  the  pivot  on  which  it  might  be 
said  the  whole  system  turns,  involves  a  leap  across  this 
breach  between  proof  and  faith.  The  arguments  for  God  as 
given  in  part  I  of  the  Summa  Theologica  (question  2,  art  3, 
Eng.  tr.,  pp.  24-27)  are  reducible  to  the  argument  for  a 
first  cause.  But  we  do  not  understand  the  nature  of  causa- 
tion. How  the  potential  passes  into  the  actual,  or  why  it 
does,  neither  Aristotelian,  nor  Thomist,  nor  any  one  else, 
has  explained  to  man.  The  match  touches  the  powder  and 
the  explosion  follows,  the  ball  hits  the  ground  and  rebounds; 
but  the  necessary  connection,  which  we  all  practically  be- 
lieve in,  is  not  accounted  for.  Hume's  criticism  is  not  fore- 
stalled. (Cf.  the  view  of  Jaime  Balmes  on  this  point,  which 
agrees  with  our  own:  Fundamental  Philosophy,  pp.  481,  482, 
483.)  Yet  suppose  the  nature  of  the  causal  connection  were 
understood;  even  then  the  crack  would  not  be  healed.  The 
demand  for  a  first  cause  is,  doubtless,  a  just  demand.  But 
there  is  a  counter-demand,  viz.,  the  demand  for  a  cause  of 
that  cause,  and  so  on  indefinitely.  The  Thomistic  proof 
does  no  more  than  insist  on  the  validity  of  the  former  claim. 
It  was  reserved  for  Kant  to  show  that  the  one  of  these  de- 
mands is  no  more  valid  than  the  other.  Has  St.  Thomas 
given  a  sufficient  reason  for  choosing  the  thesis  rather  than 
the  antitheses  in  this  antinomy  ?  Not  overtly  at  any  rate. 
To  be  sure,  a  Thomist  might  offer  a  further  defence.  He 
might  urge  that  St.  Thomas  really  did  justice  to  both  sides 
of  the  antinomy;  for  the  Doctor  did  answer  the  question  (in 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM        401 

question  4)  after  the  cause  of  the  first  cause.  God  is  causa 
sui;  His  essence  is  His  existence.  This  is,  of  course,  the 
ontological  proof,  and  it  justifies  the  comment  of  Kant,  that 
the  causal  proof  really  involves  the  ontological  one.  But 
St.  Thomas  has  already  told  us  (question  2,  art.  i)  that  the 
ontological  proof  is  unintelligible  for  man.  God  can  under- 
stand it,  but  not  we.  Hence  St.  Thomas  does  not  reveal  to 
our  understanding  the  grounds  for  belief  in  God.  The  first 
cause's  self-causation  remains  a  mystery,  and  thereby  the 
antithesis  of  Kant's  antinomy  is  not  truly  included;  and  the 
proof  of  God  is  not  rationally  defended  from  the  child's 
objection,  "  who  made  God  ?  "  We  may  resort  to  faith, 
indeed :  but  the  cleft  has  opened  before  us,  and  reason  must 
leap  across  if  it  is  to  accept  the  argument;  but  this  it  has 
no  means  of  doing. 

We  subjoin  certain  other  failures  of  reason  in  the  system. 
As  to  the  creation:  why  and  how  God  created  the  world 
must  remain  a  mystery.  Nor  can  we  understand  generation 
(as  of  the  Son  from  the  Father).  "  And  Ambrose  says  (De 
Fide,  I), '  It  is  impossible  to  know  the  secret  of  generation ' ' 
(Summa  Theologica,  part  I,  question  32,  art.  i ;  Eng.  tr.,  II, 
p.  58).  Also  potency,  a  chief  category  of  the  system,  has  no 
explanatory  value  (cf.  p.  372  above).  These  four  are  not 
minor  points,  but  foundation  stones.  But  even  if  none  of 
these  logical  gaps  were  there,  the  principle  of  not  needing  to 
understand  all  the  dogmas  would  remain,  rendering  the 
system  inadequate. 

The  breach  between  faith  and  reason  reacts,  too,  upon  the 
dogmas  themselves.  The  Catholic  prepares  the  way  for 
faith  by  a  long  chain  of  reasons.  Faith  is  at  the  top  of  a 
ladder;  we  cannot  easily  mount  if  the  rungs  of  that  ladder 
are  not  absolutely  firm.  But  reason,  however  careful,  is 
liable  to  error.  "  The  mind  of  man,"  said  Pope  Leo  XIII, 


402  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

"  is  shut  up  and  held  in  certain  bounds,  and  narrow  enough 
those  boundaries  are  "  (Encyclical  letter,  prefixed  to  trans- 
lation of  the  Summa).  Now  a  chain  is  as  strong  as  its 
weakest  link;  and  many  of  the  links  are  matters  of  historical 
evidence,  which  is  proverbially  difficult.  The  words  of 
Jesus  might  easily  not  have  been  exactly  quoted  when  He 
identified  himself  with  the  Father.  All  the  testimony  of  the 
martyrs,  the  miracles,  and  other  circumstantial  evidence 
would  then  go  to  show  that  He  was  a  supernatural  person, 
of  an  order  of  greatness  far  above  the  rest  of  mankind,  but 
yet  not  God.  And  so  with  other  crucial  passages;  viz.,  the 
address  to  Peter,  et  al.  As  long  as  the  dogmas  themselves 
are  not  intrinsically  evident,  it  can  never  be  absolutely  cer- 
tain which  dogmas  of  Scripture  are  the  ones  revealed.  A 
section  of  the  human  race,  whose  temperament  emphasizes 
reason's  claims  more  than  faith's,  will  find  herein  a  loophole 
for  dissent. 

The  rupture  thus  started  leads  to  the  same  endless  and 
futile  tilt  that  we  found  between  previous  types  of  phi- 
losophy. The  Unitarian,  revolting  against  authority  in  toto, 
undertakes  to  work  out  a  religious  system  by  the  light  of 
reason  alone.  But  he  soon  finds  life  too  short  for  the  task. 
Or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  the  problem  appears  too  difficult 
for  men,  thinking  independently,  to  attain  a  solution  ac- 
ceptable to  all.  The  result  is  that  one  grows  weary  and  turns 
his  religion  into  a  cult  of  morality.  Unitarians  have  no 
theology;  most  other  Protestants  have  a  diminishing  one. 
"  Behave  yourself  properly,"  they  say,  "  and  your  theology 
may  be  anything  or  nothing."  Such  is  the  gist  of  a  recent 
typical  book,  The  Religion  of  the  Future.  But  sooner  or 
later,  we  believe,  this  eats  out  the  heart  of  morality.  Auguste 
Comte,  the  classical  instance  of  all  such  "  ethical  culture  " 
tendencies,  at  last  endowed  his  polity  with  the  title  "  Re- 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       403 

ligion  of  Humanity  "  and  in  place  of  the  Madonna  and 
infant  Jesus  adopted  the  symbol  of  the  young  woman  with 
a  male  child.  As  we  have  already  remarked,  a  working 
religion  needs  tenets.  We  cannot  act  for  action's  sake  alone. 
We  cannot  expect  men  to  practice  long  the  difficult  arts  of 
self-sacrifice,  tolerance,  or  forgiveness  of  injuries,  unless 
they  believe  that  those  arts  are  justified  by  some  Principle 
of  the  universe,  which  will  ensure  them  well-being  to  com- 
pensate their  present  losses.  What  we  seek,  we  seek  sub 
specie  boni;  we  cannot  put  heart  into  what  brings  no  gain  in 
the  end.  The  reaction  from  Unitarianism  to  some  form  of 
Catholicism  is  but  a  question  of  time.  Of  course,  one  may 
at  this  juncture  become  a  skeptic;  that  alternative  we  shall 
later  consider.  Provided,  however,  one  retains  a  genuine 
religious  interest,  he  will  tend  to  waver  between  the  ex- 
tremes of  dogma  without  understanding  and  reason  without 
doctrine.  In  either  event,  the  philosophical  problem  is  not 
solved.  We  have  not  discovered  a  plan  of  the  universe 
satisfactory  to  the  reason  and  sufficient  for  the  conduct  of 
life. 

The  cure  lies  of  course  not  in  discarding  dogma,  but  in 
improving  it;  by  which  we  mean,  rationalizing  it.  The 
mysteries  must  be  studied  until  they  become  either  self- 
evident,  or  implicates  of  what  is  self-evident.  The  causal 
connection,  which  the  criticism  of  Hume  has  never  pre- 
vented us  from  treating  as  if  it  were  necessary,  must  be 
shown  to  be  such.  We  must  with  all  our  powers  seek  to 
illuminate  the  arcana  of  creation  and  generation.  We  must 
strive  to  ascertain  how  one  aspect  of  the  world  implies 
another.  The  practical  synthesis  has  shown,  by  most  skill- 
ful reasoning,  how  the  partisans  may  become  consistent  with 
one  another;  and  this  reconciliation  is  a  great  achievement. 
But  it  has  given  no  reasons  why  both  sides  must  be  accepted 


404  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

rather  than  one  only.  It  has  given  no  rationale  of  the  bind- 
ing principle.  It  proves  that  we  may  accept  both,  and  a 
broad  common  sense,  as  well  as  the  religious  need,  counsels 
the  acceptance  of  both;  but  we  do  not  see  the  logic  of  it. 
Such  logic  we  ought  to  seek.  Not  that  we  shall  ever  be  able 
to  stop  seeking  it!  No  exhortations  are  necessary,  for  there 
is  here  an  instinct  which  cannot  be  stifled.  But  it  behooves 
man  to  realize  this,  that  he  may  not  continue  to  fight  against 
a  foe  which  sooner  or  later  must  conquer  him.  Naturam 
expellas  furca,  etc.  Rationalism,  pitching  out  dogmatism, 
will  sometime  yield  to  that  enemy:  of  dogmatism  the 
correlative  statement  is  true. 

For  there  is,  naturally,  no  necessary  hostility  between  the 
two  methods.  It  is  common  for  Protestants  to  urge  that 
acceptance  of  dogma  violates  reason.  Since  you  are  for- 
bidden to  deny  the  dogmas,  you  cannot  inquire  about  them; 
lest  your  inquiry  should  result  in  a  disproof  of  them.  One 
might  as  well  say  we  should  never  study  the  nature  of  light, 
since  the  investigation  might  disclose  the  fact  that  there  was 
no  light.  We  accept  the  evidences  of  sense-observation ;  and 
all  our  knowledge  of  this  world  comes  from  that  observation 
and  what  it  implies ;  yet  no  one  would  say  that  the  dogmas 
of  sense  are  endangered  by  the  study  of  physical  science.  We 
know  that  the  plain  facts  of  sense  must  not  in  general  be  de- 
nied ;  but  that  knowledge  is  no  hindrance  to  our  attempt  to 
understand  them,  or  to  make  them  systematic  and  clear.  "  It 
is  absurd,"  said  Reid,  "  to  conceive  that  there  can  be  any 
opposition  between  reason  and  common  sense  "  (Works, 
Hamilton's  ed.,  I,  p.  425).  The  certainty  of  the  latter  does 
not  rule  out  the  investigations  of  the  former.  No  more  does 
religious  certainty  imply  a  prohibition  of  rational  inquiry. 
Yet  it  remains  true  that  the  method  of  authority  does  not 
actually  inquire  into  all  the  "  mysteries  of  the  Faith,"  and 


THE  PRACTICAL  SYNTHESIS  —  THOMISM       405 

does  not  counsel  the  inquiry;  rather,  in  its  official  human 
form,  it  discourages  such  inquiry  (Summa  Theologica,  part  I, 
question  32,  art.  i,  Respondeo;  Eng.  tr.,  II,  pp.  58-59).  It  is 
this  discouragement,  which  practically  amounts  to  exclu- 
sion, that  provokes  the  rationalist  to  his  protest.  But  the 
exclusion  is  not  necessarily  a  consequence  of  dogma. 

Thus,  once  more,  we  find  a  pretty  even  balance  between 
the  rivals.    Each  party  stands  for  a  motive  which  is  eter- 
nally sound.    Scientific  method,  deduction,  induction,  all  the 
processes  of  the  intellect  must  be  exercised;   the  dogmatic 
attitude,  while  admitting  this,  yet  tends  to  belittle  it.    On 
the  other  hand,  practical  certainties  abound  in  life,  and 
religious  dogma,  in  spite  of  many  accompanying  mischiefs, 
has  on  the  whole  proved  its  validity  by  its  services  to  man. 
Some  form  of  it  indeed  must  always  be  held  among  the  sober- 
minded.    The  one-sided  partisan  of  rationalism  believes  it 
to  be  not  yet  intellectually  grown  up ;  the  one-sided  religious 
devotee  considers  his  opponent  spiritually  decadent.    But 
as  far  as  we  can  see,  life  would  be  as  dreary,  even  as  impos- 
sible, without  the  one  as  without  the  other.    The  present 
age  emphasizes  the  rationalist  side,  the  Middle  Ages  the 
dogmatic;    but  a  philosophical  survey  should  not  lay  too 
much  stress  on  the  present.    The  scientific  spirit  has  been 
ascendant  less  than  five  hundred  years,  and  while  it  has 
greatly  altered  the  material  side  of  life,  has  perhaps  not 
affected  the  hearts  of  men  so  much  as  did  the  religious 
period.     The  pendulum  swings  back  and  forth,  and  the 
course  of  wisdom  is  to  remember  that  it  is  bound  to  return 
from  every  extreme.     Everything  seems  to  indicate  that 
Catholicism,  in  one  form  or  another  —  Roman,  Greek,  or 
Episcopal,  or  some  new  form  —  is  as  permanent  as  science. 
But  neither  party  solves  the  original  philosophical  problem. 
Protestantism  has  sharpened  an  indispensable  tool,  and 


406  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

essays  no  use  of  it;  Catholicism  gives  us  answers  to  medi- 
tate upon,  but  does  not  help  us  to  meditate.  The  one  will 
not  demonstrate  its  results;  the  other  has  no  results  to 
demonstrate.  Each  condemns  the  other,  while  both  are 
necessary. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE 

IF  any  reader  has  had  the  patience  to  follow  thus  far,  it 
would  seem  a  pity  to  make  him  wade  through  another 
chapter  like  the  last  before  coming  to  our  main  question. 
To  round  out  the  historical  scheme,  no  doubt,  we  ought  at 
least  to  take  up  the  massive  structure  into  which  Leibnitz 
welded  the  many  factions.  But  our  general  line  of  criticism 
ought  to  be  pretty  clear  by  this  time,  and  we  shall  content 
ourselves  with  suggesting  how  it  would  apply  to  that  great 
system. 

We  have  in  Chapter  VIII  characterized  Leibnitz's  syn- 
thesis as  on  the  whole  an  aesthetic  one :  meaning  that  it  was 
based  upon  such  ideals  as  peace,  mutual  complaisance,  and 
accord.  Probably  aesthetic  is  too  strong  a  word ;  for  though 
the  idea  of  the  universe  as  a  beautiful  chord  may  have  in- 
fluenced him,  yet  in  critical  conceptions  like  the  "  preestab- 
lished  harmony  "  and  "  compossibility  "  it  is  not  so  much 
positive  concord  as  absence  of  discord  that  Leibnitz  empha- 
sizes. His  world  is  more  like  the  unison  of  octaves  than  the 
thrilling  quality  of  the  tonic  or  diminished  seventh.  This 
notion  of  reciprocal  sufferance,  or  non-contradiction,  be- 
tween the  parts  of  reality,  was  certainly  the  precipitate  of 
Leibnitz's  teaching  in  the  mind  of  his  disciple  Christian 
Wolff.  We  believe,  then,  that  it  would  not  be  difficult  to 
demonstrate  that  Leibnitz's  main  doctrines  were  animated 
by  no  motive  of  mutual  implication,  nor  by  our  need  of 
conducting  ourselves  in  the  environment,  but  by  the  desire 

407 


408  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

to  show  how  the  parts  of  the  universe  fit  smoothly  together. 
Such  an  attitude  we  should  expect  from  the  man  who  was 
at  once  diplomatist  and  polymath.  Says  Hoffding  "... 
the  main  thought  of  his  philosophy  was  that  existence  is 
continuous  and  consists  of  a  multitude  of  individual  beings, 
each  with  its  own  idiosyncracy,  in  reciprocal  harmony  with 
one  another  "  (History  of  Modern  Philosophy,  I,  Eng.  tr., 
P-  33?)-  Not  only  these  individual  beings  (monads)  but 
their  states  or  phases,  apparently  so  diverse  and  contrary, 
are  mutually  adjusted.  Rest  and  motion  are  not  the  diamet- 
rical opposites  they  look  to  be;  rest  is  a  tendency  to  move, 
a  real  infinitesimal  motion.  Potentiality  is  dawning  actu- 
ality; whatever  is  possible,  incipiently  and  slightly  is. 
Sensation  is  but  dark,  confused  thought.  Matter  and  mind 
are  not  as  disparate  as  they  seem;  matter  is  mind  with  its 
activity  repressed  and  latent.  The  parts  of  the  universe, 
however,  do  not  form  an  organism,  for  the  monads  do  not 
influence  one  another.  They  correspond,  they  are  mutually 
representative,  and  their  differences  do  not  contradict  their 
similarity,  because  those  differences  are  not  qualitative,  but 
only  reside  in  the  degree  of  clearness,  or  of  development  of 
the  monad's  potencies.  Such  is,  very  roughly,  the  doctrine 
of  the  "  preestablished  harmony."  The  real  world  has 
ruled  out  all  things  that  are  not  "  compossible,"  that  is,  are 
mutually  contradictory.  Its  members  do  not  cohere  in  the 
sense  of  the  rationalistic  synthesis;  they  stand  side  by  side 
without  conflict.  In  particular  we  should  notice  the  very 
characteristic  reconciliation  of  freedom  and  necessity: 
every  individual  thing  or  event  is  free,  in  that  it  is  unique 
and  not  reducible  to  terms  of  law,  while  at  the  same  time  it 
is  caused  by  the  Divine  fiat:  a  fiat  which  chooses  what  it 
chooses  in  accord  with  the  greatest  possible  good  of  all 
creation  (the  principle  of  sufficient  reason).  Many  other 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  409 

universes  than  this  one  would  have  been  possible,  but  this 
has  the  least  amount  of  evil  consistent  with  the  fact  that  it 
contains  finite  beings.  The  motive  clearly  is  to  secure  a 
harmony  between  the  good  and  the  necessary:  but  in  this 
adjustment  each  works  independently,  trimming  itself  so  as 
not  to  interfere  with  the  other. 

The  system,  one  would  think,  ought  to  be  the  most  satis- 
factory of  all  systems.  Perhaps  too  satisfactory;  it  is  per- 
vaded by  an  almost  saccharine  flavour,  which  alone  would 
lead  to  a  revolt.  But  even  were  this  not  so,  we  must  ac- 
quiesce in  the  criticism  made  by  Kant,  that  the  harmonizing 
principles  themselves  are  not  independently  verified.  The 
whole  edifice  seems  to  be  of  pure  speculative  tissue  con- 
structed. Brilliancy,  suggestiveness,  almost  inconceivable 
breadth  we  have;  but  detailed  verification  is  lacking.  The 
system  rests  alone  on  its  appeal  to  our  sense  of  harmony. 
Perhaps  this  desire  to  please  all  sides  accounts  for  the  fact 
that  while  we  of  today  admire  more  and  more  Leibnitz's 
powers,  we  do  not  become  his  disciples.  Hegelians  and 
Thomists  there  are;  there  are  few  if  any  Leibnitzians.  He 
has  no  one  virile  principle,  like  that  of  rational  implication 
or  practical  need.  The  role  of  the  peacemaker  is  unprofit- 
able. Mere  good  intention,  without  fulfilment,  is  so  ineffec- 
tive. He  does  not  show  why  one  monad  happens  to  be 
accompanied  by  other  monads,  how  the  cause  leads  to  the 
effect,  how  God's  perfection  could  possibly  come  to  find 
itself  limited  by  the  necessity  of  some  evil.  In  this  way  he 
fails  to  meet  our  instinctive  desire  to  understand.  Nor  on 
the  other  hand  does  he  offer  anything  positive  to  fill  this 
gap,  as  the  Thomist  does  by  pointing  to  the  practical  need 
of  infallible  certainty,  satisfied  by  dogma.  These  gaps  must 
lead  to  a  protest,  and  philosophy  will  return  once  more  to  the 
"  solid  ground  "  of  experience  and  the  implications  of  ex- 


410  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

perience  (as  it  did  with  Kant  when  he  reacted  against  the 
Leibnitz- Wolffian  doctrine). 

The  criticism,  then,  which  we  proffer  upon  the  system  of 
Leibnitz  will  be  of  the  same  sort  as  in  the  cases  of  Thomism 
and  Hegelianism ;  it  does  not  seem  necessary  that  we  estab- 
lish it  point  by  point.  Of  all  the  synthetic  types  it  seems  to 
be  true,  that  they  are  in  their  own  way  as  exclusive  as  the 
partisan  types;  for  they  find  their  critical  points  in  one 
another's  methods  of  combining  the  parts,  as  well  as  in  the 
independent  partisan  types  themselves. 

To  those  who  specially  admire  some  one  philosopher  out 
of  those  we  have  passed  in  review,  it  will  naturally  look  as 
if  we  had  been  quite  unjust  to  his  system.  And  so  we  have: 
for  every  thinker  of  note  is  broader  than  his  main  tendency. 
Moreover,  the  formality  of  which  we  have  accused  each  in 
turn  does  not  apply  to  all  his  tenets.  There  may  be  no 
thinker  who  has  not  supplied  concrete  data  out  of  which  a 
pretty  full  portrayal  of  reality  might,  by  the  pooling  of  all 
such  contributions,  be  afforded.  In  the  very  map  which  we 
ourselves  intend  to  offer,  indeed,  there  will  be  no  one  idea 
which  has  not  been  at  least  suggested  before.  What  is  lack- 
ing, however,  throughout  all  the  scattered  truths  of  this 
sort,  is  some  vitalizing  principle  which  shall  be  seen  to 
unite  them.  But  even  such  a  principle  has  been  already 
thought  of,  though  it  has  not  been  seriously  employed  by  the 
professionals. 

One  may  also  object  that  some  very  influential  systems 
have  not  been  treated  at  all.  Thus,  Schopenhauer's  doc- 
trine of  the  Will  as  thing-in-itself ;  the  synthesis  of  Lotze; 
the  coincidentia  oppositorum  of  Nicolaus  Cusanus;  the 
number-philosophy  of  the  Pythagoreans;  the  metaphysics 
of  Mrs.  Eddy;  and  many  others.  Also  certain  hoary  issues 
have  passed  unmentioned,  to  wit:  theism  vs.  pantheism, 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  411 

continuity  vs.  discreteness,  naturalism  vs.  supernaturalism, 
and  so  on.  It  may  be  that  these  systems  and  issues  are 
more  important  than  the  ones  we  have  taken  up.  Never- 
theless we  claim  to  have  dealt  with  most  of  them  in  prin- 
ciple. For  instance:  Schopenhauer's  explanation  of,  say,  a 
man's  traits  by  reference  to  Will  (World  as  Will  and  Idea, 
bk.  II)  cannot  quite  give  satisfaction  to  our  desire  to  under- 
stand why  that  man  has  those  traits.  The  Will  is  outside 
the  sphere  of  understanding,  and  is  indifferent  to  the  or- 
dinary scientific  account  which  ascribes  the  man's  personal 
make-up  to  heredity,  environment,  and  perhaps  some 
chance  "  mutation "  or  spontaneous  variation.  Like  so 
many  idealists,  the  genial  pessimist  regards  it  as  a  weakness 
to  seek  to  account  for  the  course  of  events.  Of  course  he 
says  that  it  belongs  to  science  to  do  this,  but  in  his  view 
science  cannot  do  it,  since  causality  is  but  a  subjective  order- 
ing of  phenomena  and  does  not  tell  us  why  this  particular 
kind  of  cause  leads  to  that  particular  kind  of  effect  and  no 
other  —  as  it  does  lead.  Schopenhauer's  pessimism  itself, 
however,  is  not  such  a  formality;  it  is  drawn  from  the  detail 
of  fact.  Our  wills  are  ever  seeking  what  they  cannot  get; 
and  too  often  they  blindly  dictate  our  beliefs,  so  that  we 
become  intolerant  and  prejudiced.  Meanwhile  his  remedy 
is  not,  to  show  us  a  way  of  getting  what  our  wills  seek,  or  of 
accepting  the  truths  for  which  our  opponents  contend,  but 
—  renunciation.  This  negative  result,  which  had  been 
partly  foreshadowed  in  the  Stoic  teaching,  cannot  long  be 
accepted  by  a  humanity  whose  instinct  irresistibly  seeks 
life,  and  ever  fuller  life.  As  for  the  other  instances  above 
named,  we  leave  it  to  the  reader  to  convince  himself  that 
they  fail  to  meet  one  or  both  of  the  two  conditions  which 
are  the  criterion  of  philosophic  success;  either,  that  is,  they 
do  not  explain  the  actual  content  of  the  world,  or  they  do 


412  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

not  present  a  doctrine  which  can  be  used  to  guide  human 
life. 

Another  respect  in  which  the  types  here  studied  fail  to 
coincide  with  actual  opinions,  is  that  they  are  seldom  en- 
tertained singly;  almost  always  in  groups.  One  thinker  is 
at  the  same  time,  say,  a  subjectivist,  a  determinist,  a  dyna- 
mist,  a  nominalist;  another  is  a  realist,  a  staticist,  a  deter- 
minist, a  Platonist;  another  an  idealist,  a  libertarian,  a 
Platonist;  and  so  on.  This  is  because  each  type  usually 
bases  itself  upon  a  single  category,  or  upon  a  group  of 
closely  related  ones;  and  such  a  point  of  view  is  obviously 
too  narrow  to  cover  all  the  faces  of  reality.  With  respect  to 
one  another,  these  points  of  view  seem  disparate  and  rela- 
tively indifferent;  hence,  if  one  chooses  the  side  of  sub- 
jectivism in  the  subjective-objective  issue,  he  may  or  may 
not  choose  that  of  freedom  in  the  determinism-freedom 
issue;  and  so  for  the  rest.  Actually,  then,  philosophers  tend 
to  be  eclectic;  and  the  history  of  philosophy  is  a  morpho- 
logical account,  listing  the  compartments  occupied  by  the 
men  in  turn.  Not  that  there  is  no  connection  between  the 
disparate  points  of  view ;  but  it  does  not  concern  us  now  to 
trace  it.  Yet  with  all  this  permutation  and  combination  of 
them,  our  main  thesis  is  not  vitiated;  for  the  controversies 
between  the  parts  continue  and  are  motivated  as  above 
appeared. 

We  have  now  gotten  fairly  before  us  the  data  of  our 
problem.  We  have  set  forth  the  grounds  of  most  of  the  in- 
fluential philosophic  types;  we  have  learned  how  each  one 
not  only  fails  to  provide  sustenance  for  the  instinct  that  sug- 
gested it,  but  also  provokes  the  human  mind  to  rebel 
against  it  and  to  adopt  some  one  of  the  others.  All  revolve 
in  a  circle  about  that  centre  which  our  original  problem 
urges  us  to  penetrate;  if  we  do  not  like  one  place  on  that 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  413 

circle  we  may  choose  another,  but  the  whole  spectacle  of 
human  philosophic  endeavour  offers,  in  the  main,  nothing 
more  than  this  ceaseless  revolution.  It  becomes,  then,  our 
task  to  survey  the  data,  to  discern  the  source  of  the  trouble, 
and  if  possible  to  find  a  remedy. 

It  looks  simple  enough  at  first.  Each  system,  we  found, 
had  a  critical  point;  it  described  a  portion  of  reality,  and 
so  far  was  true  and  illuminating,  but  beyond  a  certain  place 
the  illumination  died  away.  There  was  always  an  outlying 
field  wherein  its  description,  though  still  true,  gave  no  ade- 
quate notion  of  the  facts.  This  did  not  render  the  system 
false;  and  it  was  still  easy  to  persuade  one's  self  that  the 
system  was  final,  provided  one  did  not  think  that  outlying 
field  very  important,  or  provided  one  did  not  feel  the  need 
of  a  principle  which  should  explain  all  the  specific  depart- 
ments of  reality.  On  the  other  hand,  it  seemed  pretty  clear 
that  since  all  were  true,  it  was  an  arbitrary  exclusion  which 
brought  about  their  perennial  opposition.  The  germ  of  the 
philosophic  disease  would  then  appear  to  be  a  whim,  an 
unreasonable  desire  to  triumph  over  others;  just  sheer 
unwillingness  to  admit  that  one's  adversary  may  have 
as  good  a  truth  as  one's  own.  And  this  unwillingness  is 
not  to  be  laid  at  the  door  of  the  partisan  systems  only; 
the  synthetic  types  excluded  one  another  and  the  partisan 
as  well. 

To  a  superficial  glance,  this  may  seem  sufficient;  but  it  is 
hard  to  believe  that  mere  lust  of  victory  is  the  cause  of  so 
deep-seated  an  evil.  No  doubt  it  is  a  factor  —  for  human 
selfishness  is  not  easily  dislodged;  but  surely  not  the  only 
factor.  There  is  probably  some  excuse  for  this  exclusion; 
something  in  the  objective  situation  to  make  exclusion 
seem  necessary.  We  believe  that  this  is  the  case. 


414  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

A  more  careful  inspection  than  we  have  hitherto  made 
shows  that  the  types  appear  constrained  to  contradict  one 
another. 

For  every  type,  there  is  a  critical  point;  but  the  critical 
point  has  a  peculiar  property.  It  lies  between  opposites.  It 
marks  off,  for  each  type,  an  outer  region  which  is  something 
like  the  contrary  of  the  region  in  which  that  type  is  at 
home.  Running  through  the  list,  we  see  individuals  marked 
off  over  against  universals,  mind  over  against  matter,  con- 
sciousness over  against  objects,  law  over  against  freedom, 
the  will  over  against  knowledge  and  feeling,  the  whole  over 
against  the  parts,  dogma  over  against  understanding,  static 
over  against  dynamic,  and  so  on.  Each  system  starts  from 
one  side  of  this  line  of  cleavage,  selects  one  of  these  cate- 
gories as  its  basis,  declares  it  ultimate,  independent,  irre- 
ducible, and  reduces  the  contrary  category  to  a  function  of 
it.  The  whole  point  of  the  system  is  in  attempting  this 
reduction:  if  it  did  not,  it  would  not  envisage  the  broad 
field  of  reality,  it  would  not  be  philosophy  but  a  special 
science.  Is  not  this  bound  to  lead  to  conflict  between  the 
systems  ?  If  matter  is  that-which-is-not-mind,  and  if  mind 
is  that-which-is-not-matter,  how  can  spiritualism  and 
materialism  help  conflicting  ?  If  law  is  that  which  is  not 
freedom,  and  freedom  that  which  is  not  law,  how  can  the 
determinist  and  the  libertarian  possibly  agree  ?  And  it  is 
no  arbitrary  assertion,  to  say  that  these  correlative  cate- 
gories, law  and  freedom,  mind  and  matter,  etc.,  are  op- 
posites. We  found  in  our  study  of  each  type  that  however 
much  one  type  tried  to  reduce  its  opponent  to  terms  of 
itself,  it  never  succeeded.  There  was  always  something  ex- 
clusive about  consciousness;  something  which  the  great- 
objective  formula  never  quite  reached,  always  something 
about  universals  which  no  heaping  together  of  individuals 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  415 

could  attain,  etc.  The  lesson  of  history  would  seem  to 
be  that  these  categories  are  mutually  exclusive.  Is  not  the 
quarrel  between  each  system  and  its  correlate  then  un- 
avoidable ? 

To  be  sure  we  have  said,  in  every  chapter,  that  the  cor- 
relative systems  need  not  contradict  each  other.  We  have 
said  of  each  pair  that  neither  alternative  could  refute  the 
other,  and  neither  interfered  with  the  truth  of  the  other. 
But  now  we  must  face  the  possibility  that  we  judged  too 
hastily.  Did  we  really  see  that  the  antagonists  did  not  con- 
tradict each  other  ?  No:  what  we  did  see  was  that  both 
were  true,  that  neither  could  refute  the  other.  But  what  if 
further  analysis  should  disclose  that  at  the  same  time  each 
by  implication  denied  the  other,  even  while  both  were  true  ? 
In  fact,  the  more  we  scrutinize  the  situation,  the  more  we 
shall  feel  compelled  to  admit  the  inevitableness  of  the  strife. 
For  there  are  two  very  fundamental  principles  at  work  here, 
as  it  were  generating  out  of  each  system  an  opposite  with 
which  it  must  fight:  and  while  no  doubt  both  are  sound, 
they  do  appear  incompatible.  The  one  assures  us  of  the 
ultimacy  of  those  categories  upon  which  the  several  systems 
are  built;  the  other  justifies  every  system  in  trying  to  reduce 
the  counter-categories  to  terms  of  its  own  category.  These 
two  principles  are  old  friends  of  ours  —  or  shall  we  say 
enemies  ?  They  are  the  externality  and  the  internality  of 
relations. 

The  doctrine  of  externality  says  that  there  are  entities 
which  are  the  same  in  all  environments,  independent  of  the 
relations  into  which  they  enter,  and  ultimate.  We  have 
already  argued  that  this  is  true;  we  did  not  think  that  its 
truth  could  be  demonstrated,  however,  but  only  witnessed; 
in  actual  intellectual  work  one  constantly  appeals  to  it,  as 
to  a  self-evident  axiom  (cf.  Chapter  VIII  on  Platonism). 


41 6  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

The  partisan  systems  all  start  from  it,  in  that  each  takes 
some  one  category  as  metaphysically  ultimate.  Subjec- 
tivism took  the  conscious  mind  as  thus  ultimate,  idealism 
the  Great  Self,  voluntarism  the  Great  Will,  Platonism  the 
universals,  pragmatism  the  "  biological  situation,"  and  so 
on.  The  synthetic  systems  in  their  own  way  also  started 
from  it.  Thomism  takes  the  practical  criterion  as  ultimate 
in  itself;  no  rational  confirmation  of  dogma,  whether  in 
religion  or  in  common  sense,  beyond  what  is  necessary  to 
make  it  appear  reasonable  and  consistent,  is  necessary. 
Leibnitz  regarded  the  criterion  of  harmonious  adjustment 
as  self-sufficient.  The  rational  synthesis,  building  con- 
sciously upon  both  the  principles,  externality  and  inter- 
nality,  accepts  them  as  self-supporting,  independently  of 
practical  need  or  verifiable  harmony.  Any  declaration  of 
truth  whatsoever,  indeed,  which  is  uttered  and  believed 
without  the  examination  of  all  its  possible  bearings,  is  an 
example  of  the  principle  of  externality.  And  inasmuch  as 
we  have  to  believe  certain  things  true  —  even  if  it  be  that 
the  whole  alone  is  real  —  and  at  the  same  time  can  never 
examine  all  their  bearings,  we  thereby  testify  to  the  justice 
of  the  principle.  And  so  every  system  does  but  do  homage 
to  it,  when  it  insists  upon  the  ultimacy  of  its  basal  category. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  particular  systems,  having  selected 
their  TTOU  orw,  immediately  proceed  to  exploit  the  remainder 
by  the  other  principle,  that  of  internality.  And  they  are 
driven  to  do  this  by  a  fatal  logic;  they  will  not  be  phil- 
osophical at  all  unless  they  explain  the  rest  of  the  world  in 
terms  of  their  own  base.  Unless  the  universe  is  reduced, 
analyzed,  exhibited  as  a  function  of  some  principle  or  prin- 
ciples, the  universe  is  not  understood.  Unless,  by  material- 
ism, mind  were  shown  to  be  not  ultimate,  but  constituted 
wholly  by  its  material  relationships,  materialism  would  not 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  417 

be  a  doctrine  at  all.  If  freedom  were  not  explained  as  a 
complex  kind  of  determination  by  law,  determinism  would 
not  be  a  doctrine.  Each  system  must  then  endeavour  to 
analyze  its  counter-category  down  into  relations  toward, 
or  of,  its  own  category.  As  all  belief  here  and  now,  in  ad- 
vance of  infinite  investigation,  depends  upon  the  principle 
of  externality,  so  all  understanding  depends  upon  the  prin- 
ciple of  internality.  We  do  not  wish  to  prove  the  latter 
principle  any  more  than  the  former;  we  have  already  said 
(Chapter  III)  that  it  cannot  be  proved,  but  only  obeyed. 

The  conflict  of  the  philosophic  systems  with  one  another, 
in  fine,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  all  accept  both  these  principles. 
While  each  system  saves  itself  from  internal  contradiction 
by  applying  externality  to  its  own  basal  category,  inter- 
nality to  its  counter-category;  as  a  whole,  the  field  offers 
the  spectacle  of  a  contest  between  these  two  antagonists. 

If  now,  all  these  pairs  of  categories  were  not  mutually 
exclusive,  but  amenable  to  reduction  in  both  directions, 
there  would  perhaps  be  no  ground  of  controversy.  But  it  is 
just  the  principle  of  externality  which  says  that  they  are  not 
amenable;  and  our  own  investigation  has  borne  out  the 
assertion.  No  category  has  been  reduced  to  its  counter- 
category;  nor  have  we  seen  any  way  of  doing  it.  They  are 
logical  opposites.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  principle  of 
externality  were  the  only  sound  one,  controversy  might 
cease.  The  various  systems  would  stand  peacefully  side  by 
side,  and  the  true  philosophy  be  their  sum.  But  the  prin- 
ciple of  internality  gives  the  lie  to  any  such  external  addition. 
Viewing  the  matter  collectively,  it  is  as  if  each  category  said 
to  its  counterpart,  "  I  am  ultimate  and  you  are  not,  for  you 
are  only  a  relation  in  me  " :  a  state  of  affairs  which,  accord- 
ing as  our  mood  is  light,  heavy,  or  strenuous,  will  appear 
ridiculous,  or  tragic,  or  intolerable. 


41 8  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

So  pessimistic  a  description  of  philosophy  will  not  easily 
be  admitted  by  the  professionals  —  though  we  may  con- 
ceive the  laity  taking  a  certain  malicious  delight  in  it;  and 
we  have  to  assure  ourselves  that  there  is  no  escape  from  our 
characterization.  It  would  seem  as  if  there  must  be  some 
way  out  of  this  war  of  all  against  all.  The  principle  of  ex- 
ternality our  own  account  has  verified;  if  our  tale  has  been 
convincing,  we  can  hardly  believe  that  categories  are  re- 
ducible to  terms  of  their  opposites.  Why  not  urge,  then, 
that  the  principle  of  internality  has  been  unduly  extended  ? 
Our  results  point  that  way;  we  granted,  to  be  sure,  that  that 
principle  was  formally  valid,  but  we  decried  it  as  barren, 
given  no  real  understanding  of  what  it  denned.  The  in- 
dividuals were  not  truly  accounted  for  by  their  reduction  to 
a  phase  of  the  universal;  the  theoretic  interest  was  not 
genuinely  explained  as  an  indefinitely  remote  practical 
interest;  and  so  in  other  cases.  Is  not  this  admission  that 
the  principle  of  internality  applies  only  in  a  formal  manner 
tantamount  to  a  denial  of  it  ?  Merely  a  saving  of  its  face, 
so  to  speak,  itself  as  formal  as  it  makes  out  the  principle  to 
be  ?  Perhaps,  then,  the  situation  may  be  relieved  by  a 
partial  denial  of  internality;  perhaps  by  that  means  we  may 
be  persuaded  of  the  needlessness  of  the  warfare;  and  the 
various  types  may  be  permitted  to  lie  peacefully  together. 
Such  a  denial,  indeed,  is  current  today:  it  goes  by  the 
name  of  pluralism.  It  would  cure  the  philosophic  disease 
by  a  remedy  quite  the  opposite  of  synthesis:  by  partition. 
It  is  a  time-honoured  method  of  settling  quarrels:  separate 
the  antagonists.  It  has  often  appeared  in  the  history  of 
thought;  generally  in  conjunction  with  other  types  —  as 
in  the  Herbartian  spiritualism,  or  Professor  Ward's  theism 
-  because  of  itself  it  gives  no  systematic  plan  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  no  understanding  of  one  part  from  another.  This 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  419 

does  not,  of  course,  render  it  false;  but  it  is  so  far  negative 
and  a  step  in  the  direction  of  skepticism,  however  short  that 
step  may  be.  Its  negativity  in  fact  explains  our  omission 
of  so  important  a  tendency  from  the  previous  list. 

Pluralism  need  not  deny  the  principle  of  internality  in 
toto;  for  that  matter,  no  doctrine  could  do  so.  But  it  does 
usually  deny  it  as  regards  the  chief  categories  known  to 
man.  The  various  finite  selves,  it  teaches,  are  ultimately 
more  or  less  independent;  universals  and  individuals  are 
both  real  and  irreducible  to  each  other;  subject  and  object 
also;  spirit  and  matter,  theoretical  and  practical  needs,  God 
and  ourselves,  etc. ;  all  these  do  not  form  an  organic  system 
but  a  collection,  an  aggregate.  Two  notable  books  of  our 
time  have  stood  powerfully  for  this  position:  Professor 
Ward's  The  Realm  of  Ends  and  Professor  James'  A  Plural- 
istic Universe.  The  new-realists  and  the  pragmatists  tend 
in  the  same  direction.  Those  numerous  revolters  against 
the  Hegelian  system  revolt  perhaps  primarily  at  its  mon- 
ism; discarding  its  idealism  because  of  its  internal-relation 
attribute  and  its  closed  unity. 

The  pluralist,  then,  believes  that  there  are  certain  things, 
or  categories,  or  what  not,  which  are  mutually  indefinable : 
true  last  terms,  beyond  which  a  perfect  knowledge  could 
not  go.  But  the  word  "  indefinable  "  is,  after  all,  only  a 
more  dignified  name  for  a  mystery.  If  there  should  turn 
out  to  be,  say,  just  seven  indefinables  in  the  whole  universe, 
that  is  but  a  way  of  saying  that  there  are  seven  ultimate 
mysteries;  all  the  rest  of  the  universe  may  be  understood, 
these  seven  once  granted,  but  they  cannot  be  understood. 
Now  it  is  simply  impossible  to  admit,  if  we  reflect  seriously 
upon  the  matter,  that  we  are  to  be  forever  confronted  by 
mysteries  —  even  if  there  are  only  seven  of  them.  It  is 
impossible  for  the  same  reason  that  it  is  impossible  even  to 


420  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

try  to  jump  a  ditch  without  taking  for  granted  that  our  legs 
will  not  fail  at  the  take-off.  When  we  are  brought  face  to 
face  with  this  question  of  mystery  we  cannot  allow  that 
there  are  mysteries:  it  means  the  snuffing  out  of  that  un- 
quenchable desire  to  understand;  it  means  resignation 
before  we  have  tried.  It  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  an 
exclusive  dogmatism  such  as  the  Protestant  condemns  in 
Catholicism,  and  we  ourselves  in  Chapter  X  condemned. 
It  is,  if  you  like,  an  act  of  faith  to  accept  the  interpenetra- 
tion  which  internality  implies  —  as  long  as  faith  is  not 
understood  to  connote  uncertainty.  We  use  the  term  to 
signify  that  we  are  quite  certain,  but  yet  have  not  every- 
where verified  in  the  particulars.  As  the  religious  man  feels 
his  dogma  necessary  to  the  good  life,  so  the  thinker  feels  this 
dogma  necessary  to  the  enterprise  of  philosophy.  Of  course 
nothing  is  more  obvious  than  that  many  men  do  not  so  feel, 
for  they  deny  the  dogma;  but  when  they  deny  it  they  stop 
inquiring  and  cease  to  be  thinkers.  They  no  longer  ask, 
"  Why  this  particular  indefinable  ?  "  They  say,  "  Let  us 
rest  content  at  last  in  a  mystery."  It  is  however  quite  im- 
possible now  to  prove  that  this  faith  is  well  grounded;  we 
can  only  point  to  its  actual  employment  so  far  as  one  seeks 
to  understand,  and  to  the  infinity  of  that  seeking.  The 
absolute  idealists  know  this  well,  and  that  is  their  reason  for 
accepting  the  principle:  for  they  are  the  most  thorough- 
going rationalists  of  history.  They  believe,  with  Hegel,  that 
everything  should  be  understood,  and  so  they  declare  that 
everything  is  subject  to  the  principle  of  internality.  But, 
no  doubt,  one  who  does  not  take  up  the  original  problem  of 
philosophy  with  uncompromising  sincerity  cannot  be  made 
to  have  this  faith.  It  is  possible  to  live  without  it;  it  is 
possible  to  exercise  the  intellect  a  very  great  deal  without 
granting  the  universal  validity  of  internality.  But,  as  the 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  421 

absolutists  say,  if  you  decide  to  play  the  game,  you  must 
follow  its  rules  to  the  bitter  end  —  and  the  great  rule  of  the 
game  of  explanation  is  internality.  We  have  said  that  those 
same  absolutists  have  not  succeeded  in  applying  the  rule, 
for  their  Whole  is  not  fertile  to  generate  an  understanding 
of  the  parts;  but  at  any  rate  they  recognize  it.  In  short,  we 
have  in  the  principle  of  internal  relations  an  axiom. 

That  axiom  is  however  not  treated  properly  when  it  is 
announced  by  a  fulmination  and  not  verified  in  rebus.  It  is 
just  the  fact  that  it  has  not  been  so  verified  that  has  given 
the  pluralists  their  chance.  But  even  had  we  no  desire  to 
understand,  and  no  faith  that  we  can  understand,  the  large 
amount  of  empirical  corroboration  that  lies  before  us  should 
cast  suspicion  on  the  pluralisms  solution.  In  any  case,  how 
could  he  prove  his  universal  negative  ?  How  could  we  be 
assured  that  mind  can  never  be  denned,  or  matter,  or  free- 
dom, or  any  of  the  type-categories  ?  Who  knows  what  new 
light  might  in  future  generations  be  shed  upon  these  topics  ? 
And  it  is  plain  enough  that  the  partisans  have  in  their  own 
way  put  faith  in  the  principle  of  internality,  for  they  have 
all  used  it;  the  trouble  is  that  they  have  used  it  in  opposite 
directions;  so  that  the  clash  between  it  and  its  counter- 
principle,  externality,  has  turned  into  a  battle  between 
particular  systems. 

The  pluralistic  type,  then,  cannot  be  accepted  in  so  far  as 
we  are  thinkers.  It  is  but  a  word  for  the  fact  that  so  far  we 
have  not  solved  our  problem.  It  is  not,  after  all,  properly 
speaking,  a  philosophic  type,  for  it  has  no  positive  scheme  to 
offer,  no  map  of  reality,  not  even  the  merest  outline.  It 
does  not  locate  the  parts  of  the  world  by  reference  to  one 
another,  as  a  map  should  do;  it  gives  to  the  untra veiled  no 
clew  to  the  character  of  this  or  that  region,  no  chart  of  sailing 
directions  to  the  voyager  in  unfamiliar  seas.  Instead,  it 


422  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

prescribes  an  abstinence  from  thought  in  which  the  thinker 
cannot  acquiesce.  Its  empiricism  is  commendable,  but  its 
dogmatism  is  an  arbitrary  prohibition  of  thinking. 

But  if  this  universal  interconnection  is  true,  what  becomes 
of  that  principle  of  externality  to  which  we  have  already 
agreed  ?  It  looks  now  as  if  that  could  not  be  true.  We 
thought  that  mind  and  body,  consciousness  and  objects, 
law  and  freedom,  universal  and  individual,  etc.,  could  not 
be  defined  respectively  in  terms  of  each  other;  but  it  looks 
as  if  that  result  were  only  provisional,  only  the  registration 
of  our  present  ignorance.  Nevertheless  externality  is  a 
sound  principle;  it  is,  in  fact,  an  axiom  quite  on  a  par  with 
internality.  It  is  as  much  an  indispensable  object  of  faith 
as  its  counterpart.  If  we  cannot  understand  without  the 
latter,  we  cannot  believe  without  the  former.  Internality 
alone  gives  only  relativity:  everything  is  so  far  everything 
else  that  it  is  nothing  in  particular;  the  objects  of  our  cre- 
dence forever  vanish  into  something  other  than  themselves. 
Each  part  must  however  stand  on  its  own  feet  —  upon 
whose  feet  else  shall  it  stand,  if  the  feet  of  all  the  others  in 
turn  rest  upon  its  own  ?  The  argument  for  a  TTOV  OTCO  is 
eternally  valid,  and  those  philosophers  who  defend  exter- 
nality have  always  given  it,  in  one  form  or  another  —  and 
they  have  given  no  other  plea.  So,  even  though  the  cate- 
gories may  severally  be  reduced  to  terms  of  their  counter- 
parts, they  must  remain  intact,  real  by  themselves,  in  some 
way  independent  of  each  other.  No,  externality  cannot  be 
refuted  by  internality;  it  is  as  firmly  lodged  in  the  credo  of 
the  rational  inquirer  as  is  its  opposite. 

This  then  is  the  whole  trouble,  and  the  source  of  it,  viz., 
our  thought  cannot  help  being  governed  by  two  principles 
which  appear  to  contradict  each  other.  The  principles  are 
sound  in  themselves,  and  each  supplements  the  other;  all 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  423 

thinkers  use  them  both,  though  with  differing  emphasis. 
Even  the  pluralist  uses  internality  somewhere]  when  for 
instance  he  is  occupied  in  reducing  the  real  world  to  the 
list  of  indefinables.  But  since  they  do  not  seem  to  be  con- 
sistent with  each  other,  and  since  the  principle  of  internality 
is  not  fully  verified  in  concrete,  the  latter  comes  to  be  denied, 
now  in  one  quarter,  now  in  another.  The  materialist  denies 
it  of  matter,  the  subjectivist  of  mind,  the  realist  of  objects, 
the  Platonist  of  universals  —  each  justifying  his  denial  by 
appealing  to  the  independence  (i.  e.,  the  externality)  of  his 
base.  The  occasion  of  stumbling  is  the  formality  of  the 
internal  principle;  but  the  stumbling  is  made  possible  by 
the  apparent  hostility  between  it  and  the  external.  This 
then  is  nothing  less  than  the  disease-germ  which  has  poi- 
soned all  human  philosophy.  This  it  is  which  lies  at  the 
root  of  the  perennial  controversies,  the  endless  reforms  and 
as  endless  refutations.  If  the  universe  appears  to  contain 
two  principles  which  are  at  war,  how  shall  we,  who  wait 
upon  it  for  our  knowledge,  escape  contention  ? 

Absolute  idealism  has  seen  this,  of  course.  Lacking 
specific  deliverances  about  reality,  it  compensates  by  its 
understanding  of  the  philosophic  situation.  It  is  woven  out 
of  the  two  strands  of  internality  and  externality  —  that  has 
been  shown  in  Chapter  IX.  It  finds  between  them  an  un- 
avoidable dialectic;  and  if  our  estimate  of  it  was  correct,  it 
cannot  solve  that  dialectic.  Herein  the  system  self-sacri- 
ficingly  takes  up  into  itself  all  the  controversies  which  the 
rest  of  the  philosophic  world  eternally  wages.  And  in  as- 
suming this  burden  it  is  the  most  honest  and  the  justest 
system  which  professional  philosophy  has  to  show.  If  those 
others  condemn  it,  therefore,  they  only  condemn  them- 
selves, since  they  in  their  quarrels  are  examples  of  that  same 
dialectic.  It  is,  as  Hegel  would  say,  the  philosophic  situa- 
tion come  to  self-consciousness. 


424  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

The  result  of  the  inquiry  so  far  is  certainly  not  encourag- 
ing; in  fact  we  are  at  the  darkest  point  of  our  whole  journey. 
Looking  back  over  the  reforms,  we  can  see  this  opposition 
of  self  to  other  always  at  work;  first  it  drove  us  from  one 
partisan  over  to  its  correlate,  then,  transferring  the  battle 
to  a  higher  plane,  it  vitiated  every  attempt  at  synthesis. 
The  practical  synthesis,  not  yet  fully  conscious  of  the  seat 
of  the  trouble,  glossed  it  over  (following  Aristotle)  by  reduc- 
ing one  member  to  the  status  of  a  mere  potency,  and  con- 
tented itself  with  insisting  —  correctly  enough  —  upon  the 
satisfaction  of  our  mind's  thirst  by  dogma.  The  harmoniz- 
ing synthesis,  too,  in  the  eagerness  of  its  desire  for  peaceful 
adjustment,  did  not  realize  the  latent  hostility  of  the  mem- 
bers it  joined  with  its  saccharine  paste.  The  rational  syn- 
thesis, most  intelligent  of  all,  has  in  effect  brought  to  us  the 
realization,  how  impossible  is  the  marriage  of  the  antag- 
onists. Not  only  has  every  reform  fallen  through;  we  see 
why  it  must  have  fallen  through.  Would  it  not  have  been 
better  to  fail  of  the  diagnosis  ?  Then  at  least  we  could  have 
continued  in  the  respectable  treadmill  of  philosophic  custom, 
espousing  some  one  side,  refuting  all  the  others,  and  with 
practice  developing,  perhaps,  enough  skill  to  command  a 
certain  attention,  or  even  repute. 

At  this  point  rises  a  reflection  highly  esteemed  by  the 
scientific  wing;  dismissed  too  lightly,  perhaps,  in  our  ac- 
count above.  It  is  this:  the  whole  argument  creates  its  own 
difficulties.  Don't  make  those  sweeping  generalizations, 
the  principles  of  internality  and  externality.  Be  scientific 
rather;  examine  each  problem,  each  department  of  the 
universe,  or  each  category,  by  itself.  "  Isolation  of  prob- 
lems "  is  the  suggestion.  The  account  given  in  these  pages 
may  be  quite  true  of  the  history  of  human  thought,  but  that 
history  is  mainly  a  record  of  errors.  Men  have  hitherto 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  425 

adopted  a  wrong  method.  The  only  right  one  is  slow  but 
sure  induction,  in  the  manner  of  Darwin,  or  the  physicists, 
taking  up  each  on  its  own  merits  problem  after  problem  and 
seeking  a  total  system  only  when  the  cumulative  evidence 
points  emphatically  toward  one.  Why  try  once  more  for  a 
short-cut  to  knowledge  ?  Patient  investigation  alone  will 
do  the  task,  there  is  no  royal  road  —  etc.,  etc.  The  atti- 
tude here  inculcated  is  not  pluralism,  but  just  open-minded- 
ness,  scientific  deliberation. 

The  objection  has  a  fine  appearance  of  wisdom.  And 
though  it  is  one  part  wrong,  it  is  three  parts  right.  It  lays 
down  for  the  philosopher  a  requirement  with  which  he  can- 
not dispense.  That  empirical  method,  hewing  every  step  as 
we  climb  up  the  slippery  face  of  reality,  was  championed  by 
no  less  than  Aristotle;  if  he  did  not  perfect  a  system  accept- 
able to  every  expert,  it  was  because  the  science  of  his  time 
was  but  infantile.  We,  however,  have  vastly  more  material 
at  our  disposal;  let  us  then  see  if  we  may  not  attain  a  more 
stable  system  than  Aristotle  could  reach.  Or  if  not  we  — 
for  the  task  is  too  great  to  be  quickly  done  —  then  our 
heirs.  At  any  rate,  there  is  no  other  way ;  for  what  has  not 
been  scientifically  tested  is  not  final.  Philosophy  should  be 
the  empirical  study  of  fundamental  problems  each  by  itself: 
the  meaning  of  the  chief  categories  of  the  universe,  viz., 
mind,  life,  space,  cause,  value,  time,  personality,  etc. 

All  very  well:  but  no  sooner  do  we  investigate,  say,  the 
meaning  of  personality,  than  the  doubt  arises  as  to  what 
facts  are  the  significant  ones  for  the  definition.  Is  a  man  his 
"  inner  "  thoughts,  feelings,  desires,  and  their  concatena- 
tion —  or  is  he  his  overt  relationships  with  men  and  with 
nature,  his  social  status,  his  works,  his  wealth  or  poverty  — 
or  is  he  both  of  these  ?  Is  causality  an  external  relation 
between  all  temporal  happenings,  to  be  understood  by  the 


426  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

a  priori  analyses  of  Russell  and  Royce,  or  is  its  meaning  to 
be  divulged  only  from  the  particular  modes  in  which  partic- 
ular causes  give  rise  to  their  effects  ?  Is  mind  best  elu- 
cidated by  the  introspective  psychologist,  or  should  the 
latter  turn  biologist  ?  Such  issues  are  settled  by  no  amount 
of  empirical  inquiry;  they  are,  in  fact,  but  the  clash  of 
the  same  two  principles  which  such  investigation  was 
designed  to  supersede,  but  which  dictate  the  manner  of  the 
investigation  itself. 

It  is  just  because  those  two  principles,  interrelation  and 
independence,  are  so  ubiquitous,  so  indubitable,  in  a  word 
so  a  priori,  that  the  isolated-problem  method  will  never 
suffice  to  heal  the  philosophic  disease.  The  controversies  of 
philosophy  have  not  been  controversies  about  the  partic- 
ulars —  is  the  world  made  of  hydrogen,  or  is  mind  able  to 
outlast  the  body  ?  Such  are  not  the  casus  belli;  it  is  the 
universal  trait  of  reality,  that  double-faced  quality  which 
appears  to  give  the  lie  to  itself,  that  stirs  up  trouble.  And 
as  the  quarrels  are  not  concerned  with  particulars  revealed 
by  empirical  methods,  so  they  cannot  be  settled  by  those 
methods.  And  we  might  have  known  that  beforehand.  To 
repeat  something  of  Chapter  II:  if  the  problems  could  be 
solved  by  objective  inquiry,  there  would  gradually  have 
consolidated,  as  there  has  in  the  sciences  consolidated,  a 
definite  corpus  philosophiae.  It  is  that  a  certain  positive 
character  of  reality  vitiates,  and  will  vitiate,  whatever 
results  we  gam.  Until  that  devitalizing  character  is 
reckoned  with,  the  empirical  method  is  like  a  dyspeptic  who 
would  restore  his  strength  by  eating  more. 

No:  it  is  of  no  use  to  revive  the  ancient  device  of  wiping 
the  slate  clean  and  essaying  a  fresh  start.  With  our  new 
reform  of  thoroughgoing  empiricism,  we  may  think  that  the 
old  issues  are  forgotten  and  outgrown.  But  they  reappear 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  427 

in  a  modern  dress.  We  cannot  get  rid  of  them  until  we 
have  solved  them.  For  instance,  the  modern  problems  of 
social  adjustment,  as  we  hope  to  show,  are  but  the  old  ones 
in  a  guise  suited  to  the  fashions  and  interests  of  today.  So 
it  is,  indeed,  with  all  our  chief  modern  problems.  The 
dualism  of  externality  and  internality  is  bound  to  confront 
us  wherever  we  turn;  we  cannot  settle  the  conflict  of  these 
two  in  their  present-day  shapes  until  we  have  discovered 
the  principle  which  settles  the  controversy  in  the  old  issues 
of  individual  and  universal,  static  and  dynamic,  and  all  the 
other  warring  pairs.  We  must  resist  the  temptation  to 
believe  that  our  own  empirical,  experimenting  age  is  the 
uniquely  gifted  one  of  all  history,  whose  ways  of  approach- 
ing the  philosophic  problem  are  exclusively  fitted  for  suc- 
cess. We  cannot  lastingly  solve  our  own  problems  before 
we  know  the  general  principle  of  reconciling  opposites :  else 
the  clash,  removed  from  one  sphere,  breaks  out  in  another. 

Here  we  have  turned  our  last  corner  and  stand  before  the 
lair  of  a  monster  whose  growls  may  have  been  heard  anon, 
amid  the  din  and  clamour  of  rebuttal;  to  wit,  the  monster 
of  skepticism.  Hitherto  this  view  —  if  it  may  be  called  a 
view  —  has  been  dismissed  as  giving  up  the  problem,  as 
intellectual  cowardice.  But  it  is  not  cowardice  to  know 
when  you  are  beaten,  and  skepticism  now  appears  to  be 
something  very  like  that  knowledge.  How  shall  we  say 
that  skepticism  is  weakness  when  the  skeptics,  from  Zeno 
to  Hume,  have  been  the  keenest  of  human  thinkers  ?  And 
we  are  not  talking  of  partial  skepticism  —  such  as  religious 
agnosticism,  or  doubt  of  the  external  world  —  but  of  the 
thoroughgoing  denial  of  any  certainty  whatsoever. 

That  denial  cannot  be  forestalled  by  argument  drawn 
from  any  one  type  —  for  it  depends  upon  the  inevitable 
conflict  of  types.  It  is  often  urged,  for  instance,  against  the 


428  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

skeptic  that  he  refutes  himself  when  he  declares  knowledge 
forever  impossible;  for  how  could  he  know  that  reality 
eludes  our  grasp  unless  he  knew  enough  about  reality  to  be 
sure  that  it  is  not  what  we  have  got  ?  Or  does  he  doubt  the 
truth  of  his  own  assertion  that  there  is  no  truth  ?  But  this 
sort  of  reductio  ad  absurdum,  like  the  others  that  we  have 
met  in  the  several  types,  does  no  harm.  The  full-blooded 
skeptic  does  not  base  his  denial  on  the  distinction  between 
reality  and  our  minds,  or  on  any  assumed  principles.  He 
argues  by  giving  his  enemy  rope  to  hang  himself.  He  allows 
the  philosophers  to  develop  their  theories  to  the  utmost  and 
then  quietly  points  to  the  fact  that  they  contradict  one 
another  and  their  results  cancel  out.  This  is  the  dialectic  of 
thought  made  explicit:  given  tune  enough  and  thinkers 
enough,  thought  ruins  itself.  It  is  not  an  a  priori  argument, 
but  a  posteriori. 

If  now  it  is  true  that  skepticism  —  which  is  but  the  sense 
of  despair  that  overwhelms  one  who  looks  upon  his  disease 
—  turns  upon  the  dialectic  of  views,  it  devolves  upon  us  to 
take  up  that  unpleasant  topic.  This  of  course  includes  the 
problem  of  the  antinomies  which  we  have  met  in  Kant,  in 
mysticism,  and  in  absolute  idealism.  A  moment  ago  we 
characterized  the  difficulty  by  the  opposition  between  the 
principles  of  internal  and  of  external  relations.  That  how- 
ever is  but  the  more  fundamental  way  of  stating  it;  for  all 
the  famous  old  contradictions  of  Zeno,  of  Kant,  of  Hegel,  or 
of  the  mystics  really  depend  upon  the  hostility  of  these  two 
principles.  Consider,  for  instance,  the  flying  arrow.  Ac- 
cording to  Zeno  the  tip  is  at  each  instant  of  its  flight  at  rest, 
for  it  is  in  just  one  position.  On  the  other  hand  the  tip  is 
never  at  rest,  because  it  moves,  and  motion  cannot  be 
analyzed  away  into  a  sum  of  immobilities.  Now  the  single 
instant  of  rest  is  but  the  element  of  the  whole  continuous 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  429 

motion  abstracted  out  and  considered  by  itself,  apart  from 
all  relation  to  the  succeeding  instants.  This  element  must 
be  really  present  in  the  flight;  it  stands  there  for  itself  and 
is  real  by  itself.  The  principle  of  external  relations  tells  us 
that  we  ought  not  to  say  it  is  nothing  apart  from  its  relation 
to  the  succeeding  instants;  it  is  a  fact,  really  present  as  non- 
motion.  On  the  other  hand,  the  principle  of  internal  rela- 
tions says  that  such  an  instantaneous  position  is  nothing 
by  itself,  a  false  abstraction,  only  an  aspect  of  the  contin- 
uous flight,  not  an  entity  out  of  which  the  whole  is  summed, 
as  out  of  independent  parts.  In  reality,  both  these  prin- 
ciples are  true,  and  there  lies  the  contradiction.  And  we 
do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  this  contradiction  has  never  yet 
been  solved.  A  common  device  nowadays  is  to  reject  the 
principle  of  externality  (cf.  Bergson,  Creative  Evolution, 
ch.  4,  pp.  308  f.,  Eng.  tr.  by  Mitchell).  That  is,  we  are  told 
that  the  instant  is  not  real;  the  arrow's  tip  is  never  truly  at 
a  certain  point  in  a  single  time,  but  is  passing  through  the 
point.  But  who  does  not  see  that  this  is  an  evasion  ?  How 
can  you  pass  through  anything  without  being  for  a  moment 
in  it  ?  This  way  of  escape  simply  denies  the  right  of  analy- 
sis. But  to  deny  that  is  to  deny  thought.  Bergson  does 
this,  to  be  sure,  but  we  have  already  seen  with  what  con- 
sequences to  his  own  position  (Chapter  VIII).  The  point 
has  also  been  made  that  the  tip  is  not  at  rest  in  any  of  these 
instants,  because  rest  means  remaining  in  one  position  for  a 
finite  length  of  time.  That  is  perhaps  true,  but  it  is  irrele- 
vant. In  any  case  the  tip  is  not  moving;  and  the  puzzle  is, 
how  the  motion  can  come  to  be  analyzed  at  all  points  into 
those  non-mobile  states. 

What  is  true  of  the  rest-motion  antinomy  is  true  of  the 
others.  For  instance,  take  the  Kantian  argument  as  to  the 
beginning  of  time.  Suppose  a  moment  when  time  began. 


430  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Then  this  moment  presupposes  an  earlier  one,  when  there 
was  no  time:  a  patent  self-contradiction.  It  is  nothing  else 
than  the  principle  of  internal  relations  which  dictates  the 
eternal  regress.  Why  does  the  said  moment  presuppose  an 
earlier  one  ?  Because  every  moment  of  time  must  be  de- 
fined by  its  place  in  the  time-series  —  i.  e.,  by  its  relation  to 
other  moments.  The  principle  of  externality,  on  the  other 
hand,  assures  us  that  that  way  lies  no  possibility  of  getting 
a  real  sequence.  If  every  moment  is  but  its  relations  to  the 
remainder,  what  happens  when  the  remainder  is  likewise 
analyzed  away  ?  There  must  be  some  solid  basis  for  these 
interminable  relations  to  rest  upon,  some  actually  given  irov 
0™.  Each  moment  must  have  in  itself  something  ultimate 
and  temporal,  if  it  is  not  to  vanish  into  a  set  of  relations 
without  terms;  hence  the  first  moment  may  exist  independ- 
ent of  any  previous  moments.  Mr.  Russell  has  used  this 
last  argument  in  his  plea  for  absolute  position  in  space  and 
time;  and  it  is  as  old  as  Aristotle.  Neither  of  the  principles 
can  be  denied,  and  there  lies  the  inconsistency. 

That  the  same  holds  of  the  first-cause  antinomy,  and  of 
the  necessary  Being  in  the  Kantian  list,  is  we  think  obvious 
enough  to  need  no  further  comment.  And  the  kind  of 
antinomy  which  is  stated  in  the  form  of  the  "  infinite 
regress  "  permits  the  same  reduction.  Consider  it,  for  in- 
stance, in  space.  A  line  an  inch  long  is  one  finite  completed 
quantity.  Yet,  our  thought  assures  us,  it  contains  an 
infinite  number  of  points;  a  number  so  great  that  if  we 
began  at  one  end  of  the  line  and  proceeded  toward  the  other 
we  could  never  traverse  them  all  —  since  infinite  means 
endless.  But,  again,  since  the  line  is  finite,  we  do  traverse 
them  all.  It  is  the  contradiction  of  the  completed  infinite. 
It  may  not  be  avoided  by  the  modern  mathematical  de- 
finition of  infinity,  as  that  which  can  be  put  into  one-one 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  431 

correspondence  with  its  own  part.  Great  achievement 
though  that  definition  is,  it  does  not  reach  the  present  issue. 
The  difficulty  is  to  see  how  there  can  be,  without  incon- 
sistency, as  many  elements  in  the  part  as  in  the  whole. 
That  there  are,  is  obvious  enough.  In  the  number  series,  for 
example:  the  first  odd  number  corresponds  to  number  one, 
the  second  odd  number,  three,  to  number  two,  the  third  odd 
number,  five,  to  number  three,  the  fourth,  seven,  to  four, 
nine  to  five,  and  so  on  forever.  Thus  for  each  number  in  the 
odd-number-series  we  find  one  and  only  one  in  the  whole- 
number-series,  and  conversely.  At  the  same  time  there  are 
more  numbers  in  the  latter  series  than  in  the  former,  because 
the  former  leaves  out  the  even  numbers.  The  number- 
series  then  has  been  put  into  one-one  correspondence  with 
its  own  part.  Obviously,  this  would  not  be  possible  with  a 
finite  series,  and  it  is  possible  with  an  infinite  one.  The 
fact,  naturally,  we  do  not  question;  its  intelligibility  we 
deny.  The  only  reason  why  the  part  has  always  enough  in 
it  to  furnish  a  correspondent  for  every  new  element  dis- 
covered in  the  whole  is  that  the  part  itself  has  an  endless 
(i.  e.,  infinite}  number  of  elements.  The  very  possibility  of 
the  one-one  correspondence  rests  upon  a  tacit  assumption 
of  infinity.  The  notion  of  endless  number,  of  ever  new  ele- 
ments to  draw  upon  in  order  to  eke  out  the  correspondence, 
is  not  deduced  from  the  notion  of  correspondence.  What  the 
definition  really  tells  us  is  that  only  where  we  have  an  in- 
finite collection  is  one-one  correspondence  possible  between 
whole  and  part.  From  a  logical  point  of  view,  it  is  a  vicious 
circle.  From  a  mathematical  point  of  view,  it  appears,  it 
is  useful,  because  it  brings  out  a  certain  positive  property  of 
the  infinite  which  it  substitutes  for  the  old  and  negative  idea 
of  mere  endlessness.  But  it  does  not  in  the  least  abolish 
that  negative  attribute  out  of  infinity;  on  the  contrary  it 


432  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

surreptitiously  employs  it.  And  the  puzzle  remains,  how 
the  endless  number  of  elements  can  all  be  gathered  together 
into  one  whole. 

Nor  is  the  contradiction  avoided  by  the  denial  of  points 
(or  elements);  i.e.,  by  the  assertion  that  they  are  ideal 
limits  of  division,  not  real  parts:  fictions,  hypostasized 
abstractions,  etc.  This  is  bound  to  be  a  mistake,  since  it  is 
the  doctrine  of  a  partisan  type  become  exclusive  (the  anti- 
intellectualist;  cf.  Chapter  VIII).  Even  if  we  had  not  the 
principle  of  external  relations  to  fall  back  upon,  we  could 
see  the  error;  for  one  line  cuts  another  in  a  point,  and  if 
there  were  no  real  point,  the  line  would  not  really  be  cut. 
The  points  must  then  be  as  real  as  the  line,  and  indeed  both 
are  quite  real.  Or  if  with  absolute  idealism  we  would  con- 
demn both  as  abstractions,  we  should  recall  that  that  view 
at  any  rate  admits  the  contradiction  and  —  as  we  judged  - 
does  not  solve  it. 

No,  the  contradiction  cannot  be  dodged :  and  we  may  see 
why.  The  endlessness  of  the  collection  of  points  in  the  inch 
depends  upon  the  principle  of  internality;  the  completeness 
of  the  line  upon  externality,  (i)  The  problem  is,  what  is 
the  true  nature  of  the  line  ?  Internality  says  it  is  relative 
to  its  points  and  constituted  wholly  by  them  as  terms;  a 
line  is  just  a  certain  peculiar  relation  between  points  (two 
at  least).  But  this  relation  is  of  course  not  a  sort  of  mental 
comparison  in  the  mind  of  an  onlooker,  but  an  objective 
fact,  and  it  is  to  be  distinguished  from  the  terms  (points) 
which  it  connects.  Now  in  space  the  only  distinctions  are 
ultimately  differences  of  position:  hence  the  line  must  be 
different  in  position  from  either  of  the  points  it  connects. 
Position  being  marked  by  points,  it  follows  that  there  must 
be  on  the  line  a  point  distinct  from  either  of  the  end-points. 
This  fact  is  customarily  stated  as  the  postulate  that  between 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  433 

any  two  points  there  is  a  third ;  but  this  so-called  postulate 
is  simply  an  instance  of  the  principle  of  internality  as  ap- 
plied to  lines.  Well:  if  we  have  a  new  point  between  the 
other  two,  and  if  by  the  axiom  of  internality  it  is  constituted 
by  its  relations  to  them,  then  between  it  and  its  original 
relata  new  relations  (lines)  crop  out,  leading  to  new  points 
between  them,  and  so  on  endlessly.  That  is,  a  line  between 
two  points  contains  a  third  point,  the  lines  between  this  and 
the  two  end-points  contain  each  one  more,  and  so  on  with- 
out cessation.  All  this  is  a  consequence  of  the  fact  that  a 
line  is  conceived  as  a  real  objectively  existing  relation;  it 
dissolves  into  terms  which  again  imply  relations,  which 
relations  dissolve  into  new  terms,  etc.,  forever  and  ever. 

(2)  On  the  other  hand,  the  principle  of  externality  con- 
siders the  line  as  no  relation  but  as  an  independent  term. 
It  has  a  definite  magnitude  irrespective  of  the  number  of  its 
elements.  Or  if  one  does  not  believe  in  absolute  magnitudes, 
we  shall  say  instead  that  the  line  is  viewed  in  comparison 
with  other  lines  and  found  to  possess  a  certain  length  rela- 
tive to  them.  In  either  case  the  point  of  view  from  which 
the  line  is  estimated  is  quite  indifferent  to  its  own  internal- 
relational  character:  it  is  considered  as  an  indefinable,  a 
length,  a  dimension  not  reducible  to  lower  terms  (number  of 
points).  If  reduced  at  all,  as  in  measurement,  it  is  reduced 
to  lines  as  its  parts. 

Now  both  these  principles  apply  strictly  to  the  nature  of 
the  line  itself,  and  hence  they  give  contradictory  results. 
The  relation-view  of  a  line  makes  it  not  a  complete  collec- 
tion; the  term- view  makes  it  complete,  i.  e.,  finite. 

Or  the  matter  may  be  viewed  from  the  other  end;  not  the 
nature  of  the  line,  but  of  its  ultimate  elements,  is  now  in 
question.  Kant  put  it  this  way  in  his  second  antinomy :  it 
reveals  the  two  principles  as  explicitly  as  the  above  way. 


434  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

The  thesis  reads:  there  must  be  a  last  point  in  division,  a 
TTOV  ffrw.  In  Kant's  words,  "  Every  compound  substance  in 
the  world  consists  of  simple  parts"  (Critique  of  Pure  Reason, 
Miiller's  tr.,  p.  352).  This  simple  part,  or  last  term  in  divi- 
sion, is  something  which  is  the  same  whether  alone  or 
summed  with  others  hi  to  a  whole;  it  obeys  the  principle  of 
externality.  The  antithesis  reads:  there  can  be  no  last 
point  in  division,  or  as  Kant  said  "  there  is  nowhere  in  the 
world  anything  simple  "  (op.  cit.,  p.  353).  Here  the  alleged 
last  stage  in  the  division  of  the  line  is  asserted  to  be  as  rela- 
tive to  its  parts  as  every  other  stage  was.  There  is  no  rea- 
son for  ceasing  to  apply  the  principle  of  internal  relations  at 
one  stage  more  than  another;  apply  it  then,  and  you  have 
the  result  that  the  supposed  simple  part  is  a  relation  of 
further  parts,  a  compound.  The  analogy  between  division, 
recession  in  time,  procession  in  tune  or  in  space,  is  perfect; 
in  all  of  these  categories,  the  axiom  of  externality  wars  with 
that  of  internality. 

If  we  leave  the  field  of  space  and  time  and  consider  the 
constitution  of  a  thing  with  qualities,  we  find  the  same 
situation.  A  leaf  is  green;  there  is  then  a  certain  relation 
between  the  colour  and  the  leaf,  which  if  made  clear  would 
explain  how  that  particular  colour  happened  to  belong  to 
that  leaf.  Perhaps  that  relation  would  be  this:  the  leaf 
contains  chlorophyll,  and  chlorophyll  is  green.  But  this 
relation  is  a  distinct  entity  from  the  green  colour  and  from 
the  leaf,  and  we  have  to  ask  how  it  came  to  apply  to  them. 
How  does  chlorophyll  happen  to  be  green,  and  how  does 
chlorophyll  happen  to  be  hi  the  leaf  ?  As  the  line  joining 
two  points  is  a  distinct  entity  from  either  of  the  points,  and 
therefore  contains  a  third  point  which  must  be  joined  with 
each  of  them,  so  here  the  relation  of  leaf  and  green  through 
chlorophyll  itself  needs  to  have  its  junction  with  the  leaf  and 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  435 

the  colour  explained.  Chlorophyll  is  green  because  its 
chemical  constitution  is  such  as  to  absorb  every  kind  of 
wave-length  except  that  of  green  light;  and  chlorophyll 
is  in  the  leaf  because  by  capillary  attraction  the  sap  has 
risen  from  the  trunk  to  the  leaves.  Then  new  problems 
arise,  to  be  answered  by  new  relations.  How  does  chlo- 
rophyll come  to  be  able  to  absorb  all  other  light-waves 
besides  green  ?  How  does  capillary  attraction  come  to 
occur  in  the  tree  ?  And  so  on  without  end.  The  amount  of 
scientific  knowledge  required  to  explain  a  single  fact  like  a 
green  leaf  is  infinite;  an  infinite  number  of  material  situa- 
tions must  have  transpired  right  then  and  there  in  order  to 
produce  that  one  completed  result.  It  is  the  finished  sum  of 
an  endless  collection  of  factors. 

It  is  the  principle  of  internality  which  says  to  us  at  every 
stage:  the  fact  you  have  named  is  not  final  by  itself,  but 
must  be  understood,  and  the  only  way  to  understand  it  is  to 
see  it  in  its  relations  to  the  other  facts.  It  is  the  principle  of 
externality  which  says  at  every  stage:  here  is  a  fact,  com- 
pletely determined,  standing  on  its  own  feet,  which  you 
must  believe,  independent  of  its  being  explained  or  not.  The 
internality-axiom  drives  us  ever  onward,  the  externality- 
axiom  tells  us  to  be  satisfied  with  what  is  present.  The 
former  shows  its  power  in  the  real  world,  hi  the  infinite  inter- 
twining at  every  moment  of  different  laws,  causes,  and  ele- 
ments; the  latter  shows  its  power  in  the  resultant  existence 
here  and  now  of  finite  events  and  determinate  limited  things. 
But  how  one  limited  thing  can  be  the  sum  of  an  infinite 
number  of  real  elements  is  not  clear. 

This  situation  is  often  put  more  technically;  and  there  is 
no  harm  therein,  provided  we  are  able  to  fill  in  the  abstract 
scheme  with  concrete  illustration.  Thus,  the  green  leaf  is 
self -contradictory  because  (i)  "  green  "  and  "  leaf  "  are 


436  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

two  —  the  one  being  a  colour  and  the  other  a  substance  — 
yet  (2)  they  are  one,  because  the  leaf  is  green;  they  occupy 
the  same  space  at  the  same  tune,  and  identity  is  signified  by 
the  very  form  of  the  judgment  which  unites  subject  and 
predicate.  But  if  "  green  "  and  "  leaf  "  are  two,  their  unity, 
and  if  one,  their  duality,  needs  to  be  accounted  for;  hence 
a  new  relation  must  be  sought,  grounding  each  in  the  other. 
And  so  without  end.  Or,  once  more:  A  and  B  the  subject 
and  predicate,  are  the  same  yet  different;  this  is  a  plain 
contradiction,  and  must  be  harmonized.  Let  them  be  dif- 
ferent in  one  respect,  alike  in  another  respect.  But  we  still 
have  contradiction.  Call  the  aspect  in  which  they  are  iden- 
tical C;  call  their  differences  Di  and  D2.  How  is  that  while 
C  is  different  from  Di,  yet  they  are  both  the  same  in  that 
they  constitute  A  ?  And  a  similar  question  arises  in  regard 
to  C  and  D2.  The  fission  of  the  sameness-aspect,  and  of  the 
difference-aspect,  once  begun,  will  go  on  ad  infinitum. 

When  the  thing  is  put  thus  formally  —  as  it  too  often  is 
by  even  so  forceful  an  expositor  as  Mr.  Bradley  —  the  un- 
sympathetic reader  revolts.  He  says  the  whole  dialectic  is  a 
formality:  not  a  real  contradiction,  as  when  two  concrete 
assertions  oppose  each  other.  When  one  biologist  declares 
that  acquired  characters  are  inherited,  and  another  that 
they  are  not,  there  is  real  contradiction,  something  to  be 
concerned  about  and  to  be  solved  by  further  evidence.  But 
when  we  are  told  that  a  thing  is  a  finite  sum  of  infinite  rela- 
tions the  contradiction  is  not  significant.  It  neither  adds 
information  nor  is  to  be  solved  by  information.  It  is  con- 
structed out  of  figments;  relation  after  relation  is  "  cooked 
up  "  in  order  to  create  a  difficulty  when  there  is  no  difficulty, 
so  as  to  lead  to  some  favoured  philosophical  doctrine. 

Such  a  view  is  common  in  a  time  when  we  want  to  get 
results  and  get  them  quickly ;  it  serves  to  excuse  us  for  neg- 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  437 

lecting  a  topic  as  uninteresting  to  most  people  as  morning 
prayers  and  (we  regret  to  say)  as  ineffective  upon  daily  life. 
But  the  view  is  quite  superficial.  Who  declares  the  dialectic 
a  formality,  has  not  understood  it.  When  it  is  stated  in 
symbolic  language,  we  do  not  see  its  pertinence.  But  as  we 
may  see  from  the  instance  of  the  green  leaf,  it  is  nothing  else 
than  the  two  agents  of  the  dialectic  that  make  us  seek  ever 
deeper  scientific  explanations.  Why  has  a  certain  substance 
the  colour  it  has  ?  Why  does  the  sap  run  ?  Why  are  some 
wave-lengths  taken  up  by  this  substance  and  not  by  that  ? 
Why  does  light  come  in  the  wave-lengths  observed  ?  Ques- 
tions like  these  are  hardly  to  be  regarded  as  idle  figments 
"  cooked  up  "  by  a  philosophy  which  will  plead  for  some 
special  view.  They  are  the  life-blood  of  science.  Of  course 
if  one  does  not  like  the  word  "  why  "  in  our  account  — 
many  have  said  that  science  asks  not  why  but  how  things 
happen  —  he  may  substitute  "  how."  That  is  a  verbal 
matter.  But  the  impulse  to  see  clearly  the  connections  in 
nature's  events  is  no  verbal  matter;  it  is,  as  we  said  in 
Chapter  I,  the  root  of  all  science  and  all  philosophy  alike. 

Need  we  also  repeat  that  whoever  rejects  the  dialectic  is 
by  the  logic  of  events  made  an  example  of  ?  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  all  the  types  except  the  Hegelian,  reject  it;  and  they 
are  sufficiently  pilloried  for  doing  so.  What  results  have 
they  to  show  ?  They  do  but  contradict  one  another.  And 
for  that  matter  have  they  not  been  found  as  formal  as  they 
accuse  the  dialectic  of  being  ?  If  the  Hegelian  is  hardly 
better  off,  is  it  not  because  he  has  never  been  able  to  get 
beyond  the  dialectic  ?  He  only  reiterates  "  We  must  get 
beyond:  reality  gets  beyond  it."  Which  we  also  believe: 
but  how  can  we  understand  the  getting  beyond  ? 

But  the  dialectic  is  yet  more  efficacious.  It  enters  into  all 
human  life;  into  history  and  politics  and  art  and  morality, 


438  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

into  religion  and  custom,  and  in  its  own  way  it  is  not  absent 
from  the  intimacies  of  private  life.    When  we  gave  account 
of  the  main  types  of  philosophy,  we  tried  to  show  that  they 
concerned  not  man's  intellect  alone,  but  his  whole  person- 
ality.   Each  type  ministers  to  practical  needs  and  to  emo- 
tional needs.     Subjectivism  gave  comfort  to  the  egotistic 
impulses  of  man,  idealism  to  his  love  of  personality,  realism 
to  his  worship  of  independence,  Thomism  to  his  need  for 
practical  certainty,  pragmatism  to  his  instinct  for  experi- 
ment, et  sic  ultra.     These  systems  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously went  along  with  corresponding  attitudes  to  the 
problems  of  politics,  social  order,  material  progress,  religion. 
What  if  they  did  not  always  succeed  —  as  we  saw  they  did 
not  —  in  gratifying  the  impulses  which  originated  them  ? 
As  philosophical  systems,  they  turned  out  formalisms;   in 
practical  life  they  led  always  to  battles  with  an  opposing 
school  —  and  battles  never  finally  decided.    Catholic  and 
Protestant  must  disagree,  Unitarian  and  Trinitarian,  Whig 
and  Tory,  Conservative  and  Liberal,  Republican  and  Dem- 
ocrat, classicist  and  romanticist,  rigourist  and  hedonist, 
advocate  of  laissez-faire  and  socialist,  capital  and  labour, 
all  through  the  long  list  of  parties  whose  strife  has  made  up 
human  history.    Each  of  these  parties  builds  upon  one  of  the 
two  principles  whose  clash  constitutes  the  dialectic.    Has 
any  of  them  succeeded  in  establishing  itself  as  the  one  right 
view,  satisfying  all  human  needs  ?    Has  it  worked  out  a 
scheme  which  even  stood  fast  on  its  own  feet  and  grew  and 
by  the  consensus  expertorum  —  not  to  say  gentium  —  bade 
fair  to  be  final  ?   Perhaps  so,  for  a  time ;  every  age  probably 
views  its  own  prevailing  doctrines  with  a  hidden  conviction 
of  finality.    But  in  general,  men's  political  institutions,  their 
moral  codes,  their  religious  sects,  or  their  business  methods, 
have  been  as  exclusive  and  hostile  and  as  far  short  of  finality 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  439 

as  their  philosophical  schools;  and  if  the  former  have  lasted 
longer,  it  was  because  their  devotees  believed  them  indis- 
pensable to  life  and  had  to  organize  them  better. 

Let  us  see  in  more  detail  how  our  two  principles  have 
generated  these  quarrels.  When  religion  champions  a  fixed 
theology,  it  so  far  abjures  the  method  of  waiting  to  see  all 
the  bearings  of  the  dogmas.  It  says,  "  we  cannot  wait;  we 
must  have  something  to  go  upon."  At  the  dictation  of  the 
need  of  confidence,  of  a  firm  basis  for  the  moral  conduct  of 
life,  it  accepts  the  revelation.  Its  doctrines  are  held  true  in 
their  own  right,  irrespective  of  bearings,  relations,  con- 
firmations subsequently  to  be  discovered.  This  is  obedience 
to  the  principle  of  external  relations.  Of  course,  Thomism 
did  not  at  all  refuse  to  consider  these  bearings.  It  has  con- 
sidered them  to  an  enormous  extent:  it  has,  perhaps,  found 
strong  confirmation.  Nevertheless,  the  citadel  of  its  fortress 
does  not  record  that  confirmation;  as  we  saw  at  the  end  of 
Chapter  X,  dogma  needs  it  not.  The  virtue  of  the  act  of 
faith  lies  in  its  independence  of  evidence  from  other  things. 
The  principle  of  internali ty  is  excluded.  The  Protestant, 
on  the  other  hand,  insists  upon  confirmation  by  reason;  a 
doctrine  must  not  be  accepted  unless  shown  to  cohere  with 
the  individual's  judgment,  with  the  teaching  of  science  and 
the  best  good  of  human  life.  Internality  is  the  fundamental 
principle  of  Protestantism.  True,  most  of  the  Protestant 
sects  do  not  reject  dogma  entirely.  They  have  their  creeds, 
their  revelation,  in  one  part  or  another;  as  with  the  dogma 
of  the  Trinity,  for  example.  They  have  seen  that  man  can- 
not live  by  reason  alone,  and  they  have  accordingly  com- 
promised between  the  method  of  scientific  confirmation  and 
that  of  unquestioning  faith.  In  some  points  they  accept  the 
one,  in  some  the  other.  The  Unitarian  alone  is  uncom- 
promising: his  motto  is,  to  believe  only  what  he  can  see 


44°  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

squared  with  the  natural  reason  of  man.  He  cannot  under- 
stand how  God  may  be  one  and  yet  three,  or  how  a  just  God 
could  accept  a  sacrifice  from  a  sinless  Christ.  Hence  he 
rejects  the  Trinity  and  the  Atonement.  He  is  thus  forced 
into  controversy  not  only  with  Catholicism,  but  with  the 
other  Protestant  sects  who  in  part  retain  the  Catholic 
attitude.  Hereby  originate  those  quarrels  that  have  con- 
sumed so  much  of  the  religious  fervour  of  Christianity. 

Turning  now  to  a  very  different  field,  that  of  social  re- 
form, we  find  that  here  the  issue  lies  between  the  individual's 
self-sufficiency  and  his  dependence  upon  the  whole  social 
body.  "  Equal  opportunity  for  all  "  is  the  watchword  of 
most  socialistic  enterprises:  it  is  an  altruistic  ideal.  The 
laws  should  be  so  framed  that  one  man  cannot  by  superior 
cunning  or  ingenuity  make  it  harder  for  others  to  earn  a 
fair  living;  monopoly,  cornering  the  market,  crowding  out 
small  dealers  by  great  combinations,  all  these  practices 
work  against  equality  of  opportunity.  When  there  is  a 
fairly  large  body  of  men  who  feel  that  their  wages  are  insuf- 
ficient to  give  them  equal  advantages  with  the  rest,  and 
when  at  the  same  time  their  labour  is  indispensable  to  the 
community,  they  declare  war,  i.  e.,  they  strike.  This  strife 
of  capital  and  labour  is  simply  the  result  of  social  conditions 
which  permit  individual  inequalities  to  grow  unchecked. 
It  is  due  to  the  fact  that  one  part  of  society  forgets  that  its 
own  welfare  depends  upon  that  of  the  other  parts.  Any  part 
or  class  or  individual,  if  it  has  the  power,  resents  this  exclu- 
sive, self-sufficient  attitude,  and  social  order  is  more  or  less 
destroyed.  This  is  socialism's  reductio  ad  absurdum  of 
individualism ;  and  in  the  former's  opinion  it  proves  that 
man  is  essentially  a  member  of  society.  The  doctrine  of 
equal  opportunity  is  at  bottom  the  doctrine  of  the  social 
organism;  for  the  organism  is  that  in  which  each  part  is 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  441 

both  means  and  end.  So  it  is  also  with  democracy,  of  which 
socialism,  generally  speaking,  is  only  the  logical  consequence. 
What  else  does  democracy  mean  but  that  all  individuals 
should,  as  regards  the  fundamental  needs  of  life,  have  an 
equal  chance  because  they  are  of  equal  worth  ?  All  should 
vote  —  women  as  well  as  men  —  all  should  be  educated,  all 
should  have  free  utterance,  no  opinion  should  be  condemned 
without  a  hearing,  all  social  experiments  should  be  tried  so 
far  as  humanly  possible,  etc.  And  what  is  the  motive  for 
these  beliefs  unless  it  be  a  deep-seated  conviction  that  one 
man's  welfare  depends  on  that  of  all  others,  that  a  man 
"  lives  not  unto  himself  alone  "  but  unto  all  the  human 
race  ?  In  short,  that  the  individual  is  constituted  by  his 
relations  to  other  men  ?  In  the  method  by  which  this  ideal 
equality  is  to  be  secured,  also,  socialism  reveals  its  basis. 
Government  management,  government  ownership:  this  is 
its  programme.  But  government  is  no  individual,  it  is  the 
representative  of  society  as  a  whole.  It  is  (or  ought  to  be) 
the  tribunal  of  justice  and  impartiality;  the  sign  and  seal  of 
the  social  body.  It  is  to  the  individual  citizen  the  reminder 
of  the  principle  of  internal  relations ;  his  own  interests  taken 
by  themselves,  lead  him  to  consider  himself  external  to  the 
rest.  Progress  in  civilization,  to  this  democratic  view,  is 
only  the  increased  application  of  the  principle  of  internality 
to  the  needs  of  men. 

Over  against  this  stands  the  ideal  of  individualism.  How- 
ever fundamental  are  the  social  relations,  individuals  will 
always  differ  in  endowment;  for  each  individual  is  not 
simply  a  social  function,  but  real  and  unique  in  himself. 
Some  will  get  their  wants  better  satisfied  than  others. 
Equal  opportunity  will  not  ensure  equal  distribution  of 
goods ;  the  socialistic  ideal  is  impractical.  Individual  dislike 
of  certain  tasks  —  stoking,  cleaning  sewers,  even  preparing 


442  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

meals  —  is  too  strong  to  be  overcome  by  the  social  sense 
alone.  Government  ownership  would  bring  the  railroads, 
the  shipping  industry,  etc.,  into  a  mess  of  political  intrigue, 
i.  e.,  individual  self-seeking.  Successful  enterprise  can  be 
carried  on  only  by  individual  initiative  and  individual 
responsibility.  "  One-man  power  "  is  the  watchword  of 
individualism,  as  "  equal  opportunity  "  of  socialism.  What 
is  society  but  a  collection  of  individuals  ?  And  do  not  the 
greater  individuals  deserve  more  than  the  lesser  ?  Ought 
not  those  eminent  intellects  who  have  founded  the  modern 
gigantic  business  combinations,  with  their  perfected  organ- 
ization, to  receive  the  wealth  which  rewards  their  superior 
skill  ?  Do  they  not  deserve  more  than  the  mediocre  citizen 
who  plods  unambitiously  through  his  daily  task,  or  the 
poor  man  who  carelessly  begets  a  huge  family  and  then 
wonders  why  he  has  not  a  sufficient  income  ?  Should  the 
vote  of  the  unintelligent  count  as  much  as  the  vote  of  the 
well-informed  ?  So  the  argument  runs,  ramifying  into 
countless  details.  In  all  this,  individualism  rests  upon  the 
principle  that  every  man  has  his  own  peculiar  powers, 
qualifications,  needs,  and  should  be  allowed  to  have  what 
they  demand.  It  is  the  principle  of  externality.  From  its 
point  of  view,  equality  of  opportunity  defeats  itself;  when 
room  is  made  for  the  small,  the  great  are  cramped,  and  they 
need  more  opportunity  than  the  average.  Has  not  all 
progress  come  through  the  exceptional  opportunities  which 
chance,  or  wealth,  or  patronage,  or  force,  afforded  to  excep- 
tional individuals  ?  If  you  don't  cultivate  the  geniuses 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  ordinary  ones,  where  will  be  scientific 
advance  ?  Such  is  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  socialism, 
at  the  hands  of  the  individualist.  If  the  former  lays  stress 
upon  the  sameness  of  men,  so  does  the  latter  upon  the  dis- 
tinctions between  them.  The  position  leads  toward  some 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  443 

form  of  aristocracy,  though  not  necessarily  the  older  forms 
based  upon  family  or  wealth. 

Our  actual  life,  our  government  in  the  United  States  of 
America  —  practically  all  governments  today  in  fact  —  are 
of  course  a  compromise  between  these  two.  The  various 
governments  differ  in  the  degree  to  which  they  emphasize 
the  one  or  the  other.  And  within  our  own  government,  the 
distinct  departments  emphasize  the  two  principles  in  dif- 
ferent degrees.  The  executive  branch  is  based  mainly  upon 
externality;  the  power  of  appointment,  of  veto,  of  com- 
mander in  chief  of  army  and  navy,  and  above  all  the  per- 
sonal responsibility  of  the  President,  bearing  the  tremen- 
dous burden  of  criticism  —  these  are  externalist  ideals. 
The  legislative  bodies  on  the  other  hand  are  supposed  to  act 
only  after  free  discussion  and  mutual  argument;  they  are 
democratic  in  purpose.  But  it  is  well  known  that  the  dem- 
ocratic aspect  gradually  recedes  into  the  background;  how 
many  measures  are  there  whose  fate  is  not  decided  in  the 
small  committee  ?  To  prevent  this  individualistic  reversion 
to  government  by  the  special  few,  has  been  proposed  the 
"  initiative  ";  and  the  issue  is  once  more  between  govern- 
ment by  the  whole  social  body  and  government  by  a  few 
individuals  —  i.  e.,  internality  vs.  externality.  In  the  judi- 
ciary branch,  the  principle  of  individualism  is  once  more 
ascendant.  The  Supreme  Court,  appointed  by  the  Presi- 
dent, is  independent  of  the  will  of  the  people;  they  hand 
down  the  fixed  body  of  doctrine  by  which  the  conduct  of 
the  nation  —  its  laws  —  must  be  guided.  And  here  again 
in  recent  years  the  internalists  show  signs  of  revolt,  in  the 
cry  for  the  recall  of  judges  by  popular  vote.  Again  the 
battle  is  between  the  same  protagonists. 

In  education  also.  Most  of  the  civilized  nations  have 
committed  themselves  to  the  democratic  ideal  of  universal 


444  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

education ;  but  it  is  not  yet  possible  to  carry  this  programme 
into  the  upper  reaches  of  learning.  It  is  still  few,  though 
not  nearly  so  few  as  formerly,  who  obtain  the  university 
training.  But  the  size  of  our  colleges  has  increased  a  hun- 
dredfold. Now  note  the  two  policies  in  conflict.  Not  long 
ago  was  introduced  the  elective  system;  at  first  in  univer- 
sities, then  in  colleges  and  high  schools.  By  that  system 
the  pupil  is  free  to  choose  his  studies.  It  is  employed  in 
different  degrees  in  different  schools;  in  none  quite  unal- 
loyed, in  none,  or  practically  none,  quite  absent.  It  rests 
upon  the  hypothesis  that  the  pupil's  judgment  is  as  good 
as  the  instructor's.  Few  instructors  would  accept  this 
hypothesis  without  qualification,  to  be  sure,  but  then  the 
elective  plan  is  nowhere  admitted  unmixed.  In  so  far  as  it 
is  adopted,  however,  that  hypothesis  is  made.  It  is  a 
thoroughly  democratic  principle;  it  places  student  and 
teacher  on  the  same  level;  it  furnishes  a  democratic  cri- 
terion for  the  success  of  the  teacher's  work,  in  the  number  of 
students  he  is  able  to  attract.  The  older  criterion,  the 
judgment  based  on  the  attainments  of  the  individual  pupils 
he  turns  out,  their  success  in  getting  the  higher  degrees, 
gradually  lapses;  quantity  replaces  quality.  The  instruc- 
tor's work  is  not  estimated  by  unusual  results  in  a  few 
cases,  but  by  a  wider  social  appeal.  The  test  is  not  so  much 
the  soundness  of  what  he  teaches,  its  effectiveness  in  pro- 
ducing some  rare  birds,  but  the  attitude  which  the  many 
take  towards  it.  This  is  clearly  the  ideal  of  education  which 
is  governed  by  the  principle  of  internality.  Teaching  is 
assessed  according  to  its  effect  upon  the  great  social  body; 
according  to  the  numbers  taught  rather  than  by  its  effect 
upon  individual  genius.  In  the  very  class-room  itself  the 
issue  arises.  Shall  the  teacher  labour  that  the  whole  class 
may  understand,  or  let  the  dullards  go  and  concentrate 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  445 

upon  the  brilliant  ?  The  one  method  lifts  the  great  flat 
weight  of  the  majority,  the  other  tries  to  build  up  a  few 
pinnacles  of  intellect;  which  raises  the  level  of  humanity 
the  higher  ?  The  more  aristocratic  European  education 
has  produced  by  selection  the  latter  kind  of  result;  our  own 
more  democratic  way  has  perhaps  diffused  a  sort  of  average 
intelligence  more  widely  and  thus  raised  that  great  flat 
weight.  It  would  seem  foolish  to  adopt  one  of  these  very 
much  at  the  expense  of  the  other;  but  there  is  always  more 
or  less  of  an  issue  between  the  two. 

At  present  it  looks,  to  a  surface  inspection,  as  if  the  dem- 
ocratic ideals  were  registering  one  triumph  after  another  on 
the  sure  road  to  the  millennium;  not  to  follow  them  is  to 
hark  back  to  the  cruelty  and  ignorance  of  the  Dark  Ages. 
How  fervently  are  those  ideals  apostrophized  in  the  utter- 
ances of  our  publicists!  How  patently  do  we  judge  our 
fellows  by  their  conformance  to  those  ideals!  A  political 
measure,  a  moral  maxim,  a  man's  behaviour  in  the  give  and 
take  of  every  day  life,  is  characterized  as  undemocratic: 
what  more  summary  condemnation  have  we  ?  To  every 
age,  we  have  said,  its  own  major  premises  seem  final;  and 
to  this  age,  even  to  the  most  intellectual  men  of  it,  the  dem- 
ocratic principle,  with  its  exclusive  emphasis  upon  the  social 
relations  and  the  principle  of  internality,  seems  the  goal  of 
all  human  effort  and  the  absolute  truth  of  life.  Yet  it  is 
not  becoming  to  the  thinker,  to  be  carried  off  his  feet  by  a 
partisan  view.  He  should  learn  the  lesson  of  history,  that 
the  pendulum  is  bound  to  swing  from  one  side  to  the  other, 
that  a  one-sided  type  must  sooner  or  later  be  corrected  by 
its  counter-type.  It  is  not  possible  that  the  internal  prin- 
ciple will  finally  shut  out  the  external.  In  the  latter,  the 
former  meets  its  critical  point;  which  is  to  say  that  certain 
natural  instincts  of  man  can  never  be  erased  nor  quenched 


446  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

by  the  doctrine  that  man  is  only  a  member  of  society.  Man 
is  more  than  a  network  of  relations.  Members  differ,  and 
each  is  bound  to  retain  a  measure  of  independence.  He 
must  be  allowed,  if  he  can,  to  see  further  than  the  public 
conscience  of  his  time  sees,  to  develop,  perhaps  in  some 
isolation,  the  fruits  of  his  own  personality,  whether  in  the 
way  of  artistic  production,  or  scientific  discovery,  or  reli- 
gious insight.  The  reason  why  the  ideals  of  democracy, 
like  those  of  science,  seem  to  be  sweeping  away  forever  the 
old  individualism  and  piety  is  that  up  to  this  date  they  have 
not  had  a  fair  trial.  Their  novelty  gives  them  an  air  of 
promise;  sick  of  the  one-sidedness  of  the  past,  we  turn  to  a 
new  one-sidedness.  Individualistic  government,  dogmatic 
religion,  classic  art  have  had  their  day ;  the  counter-ideals 
have  not.  Let  them  have  it!  But  much  trouble  may  be 
saved  if  we  reflect  that  individualism  cannot  be  quite  extir- 
pated from  our  nature.  Any  student  of  philosophical  sys- 
tems, who  has  seen  human  thought  try  one  reform  after 
another,  should  know  that  this  oscillation  between  extremes 
only  perpetuates  the  battle.  The  bitter  conflict  persists, 
and  will  always  persist  until  some  harmonizing  principle  is 
brought  to  bear.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  only  institutions 
that  have  ever  worked  are  compromises  between  the  two 
enemies,  modi  vivendi,  adopted  as  the  best  substitute  for 
solution.  But  compromises  are  in  unstable  equilibrium,  in 
practice  as  in  theory,  in  social  systems  as  in  philosophic. 
They  suppress  individualism  in  one  place  and  socialism 
(using  the  word  broadly)  in  another;  as  our  government 
more  or  less  suppresses  the  latter  in  the  judiciary  and  the 
former  in  the  legislative  branch.  And  the  result  is  that 
socialism  protests  and  would  reform  the  Supreme  Court, 
while  at  the  same  time  the  work  of  Congress  tends  more  and 
more  to  be  done  in  committee,  behind  the  scenes,  by  the 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  447 

few  past  masters  of  the  political  game,  and  the  President 
tends  more  and  more  to  follow  the  vox  populi.  And  in  fact, 
the  boss  system,  the  spoils  system,  and  other  efforts  toward 
special  privilege,  are  only  individualism  returning  in  a  bad 
form  because  no  other  form  is  allowed  it.  Once  more, 
naturam  expellas  furca,  etc. 

In  art,  we  have  the  opposition  of  classic  and  romantic. 
Classic  beauty  is  dependent  upon  relation  of  the  parts;  it 
is  based  upon  the  idea  of  balance  or  organic  unity;  it  fol- 
lows the  principle  of  internality.  Romantic  beauty  is 
inherent  in  the  object  or  situation  itself;  a  virile  quality, 
stirring  the  beholder  by  a  certain  intrinsic  dynamism. 
Herein  it  manifests  the  principle  of  externality,  as  anything 
independent  does.  Impressionism,  on  the  other  hand,  is  in 
contrast  with  both  these;  it  looks  to  the  relation  between 
the  work  of  art  and  the  beholder.  It  thus  depends  upon  the 
internal  principle,  but  in  one  direction  only;  it  is  allied  to 
the  subjectivistic  tendency  in  metaphysics.  In  another 
way,  however,  it  is  an  example  of  externality.  The  structure 
of  the  object  does  not  matter,  its  relations  to  other  objects, 
the  arrangement,  order,  etc.,  of  parts  is  indifferent.  As  long 
as  it  is  felt  to  be  beautiful  it  is  so,  and  the  subject's  feeling 
is  a  criterion  sufficient  unto  itself.  In  the  same  way  the 
philosophic  type  subjectivism  took  the  subject  as  independ- 
ent. Post-impressionism  in  turn  offers  a  new  contrast.  As 
radicalism  in  art  it  is  akin  to  social  democracy;  it  stands 
for  the  intrinsic  interest,  even  beauty,  of  all  things  —  pots, 
pans,  cobblestones,  dreary  streets,  all  that  men  have 
hitherto  found  insignificant.  Distinctions  of  value  dis- 
appear; there  is  no  aristocracy  in  the  realm  of  beauty. 
The  form,  too,  tends  to  deny  better  and  worse:  it  is  "  free 
verse. ' '  In  music  it  gives  room  to  what  have  been  considered 
discords;  it  includes  all  possible  combinations;  the  tonic 


448  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

has  no  superiority;  major  and  minor  are  no  longer  dis- 
tinguished. All  is  relative  to  the  point  of  view;  if  a  man  is 
but  willing  to  look  or  listen,  to  train  himself  hi  the  new 
modes  of  expression,  they  will  seem  beautiful.  Is  not  this 
strictly  comparable  to  the  democratic  belief  that  one  man 
is  as  interesting  and  as  valuable  as  another  ?  It  looks  away 
from  individual  distinctions,  and  toward  a  general  levelling. 
Equality  is  its  motto.  In  declaring  that  intrinsically  no  one 
chord,  or  melody,  or  scene,  or  object  is  better  than  another, 
it  subscribes  to  the  doctrine  of  universal  relativity,  and 
builds  upon  the  principle  of  internality.  And  thereby  it 
makes  indignant  those  who  retain  a  belief  in  distinctions  of 
better  and  worse;  in  certain  objects,  situations,  tone-com- 
binations, as  inherently  more  beautiful  than  others.  The 
latter  view  of  course  illustrates  the  principle  of  externality; 
and  once  more  the  battle  is  on. 

Further  instances  may  be  given.  In  morals,  we  find  the 
rigorist  opposing  the  hedonist.  The  former  accepts  the  idea 
of  certain  deeds  being  right  in  themselves;  the  ten  com- 
mandments, or  "  self-realization,"  or  the  mean  between  two 
extremes,  or  the  gospel  of  love,  embody  his  moral  law.  The 
latter  will  grant  that  any  conduct  is  right  which  brings  a 
good  result  —  the  single  directly  verifiable  good  result  being 
happiness.  The  rigorist  here  follows  in  his  absolutism  the 
principle  of  externality;  the  hedonist,  deeming  goods  rela- 
tive to  human  feeling,  the  opposite  principle.  In  general, 
idealism,  whether  in  morals  or  art,  depends  upon  externality; 
for  the  ideals  men  pursue  are  felt  to  be  worthy  ends  in  and 
by  themselves.  They  justify  their  own  subsistence,  inde- 
pendent of  further  consequences.  Realists  in  morals  and 
art  are  relativists;  they  tend  to  recognize  no  ultimate, 
absolute  distinctions  of  good  and  bad.  Whatever  ministers 
to  human  advantage  is  good ;  and  whatever  is  true  to  life  is 
interesting  and  beautiful. 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  449 

Of  this  sort  is  also  the  conflict  between  religion  and 
science.  The  religious  man  would  prove  the  reality  of  his 
ideals,  God  and  immortality;  the  scientist  is  not  interested 
in  one  fact,  or  set  of  facts,  more  than  in  another.  The  former 
does  not  really  care  for  all  truth  as  such;  he  prefers  some 
truth,  if  he  can  attain  it,  to  other  truth.  He  views  reality 
as  an  aristocracy,  presided  over  by  a  supreme  being,  and  he 
is  interested  first  of  all  in  this  supreme  being.  The  dem- 
ocratic attitude  is  that  of  the  scientist;  he  will  not  seek  any 
such  one  privileged  truth,  but  will  only  impartially  collect 
facts  and  let  them,  if  they  must,  point  to  a  creator.  What- 
ever comes  to  his  net  is  for  him  valuable;  he  might  say  "  all 
the  true  is  good."  On  the  other  hand,  the  pious  soul  does 
not  make  good  a  predicate  of  all  truth;  but  only  of  some 
particular  truth;  he  makes  good  thus  a  special  quality  not 
possessed  by  all  things.  Reversing  the  scientific  attitude, 
he  might  say  "  all  the  good  is  true."  He  makes  the  good 
into  a  substantive,  and  self-sufficient;  his  opponent  makes 
it  into  a  predicate,  relative  to  his  own  desire  to  get  facts. 
If  we  take  the  point  of  view  of  value,  the  scientist  appears  to 
lack  discrimination;  if  we  take  the  point  of  view  of  truth, 
the  religious  man  seems  to  be  no  impartial  inquirer.  Each 
thus  condemns  the  other  for  not  doing  justice  to  his  prin- 
ciple. And  in  fact  each  is  right.  The  existence  of  God,  and 
the  truth  of  immortality,  are  not  yet  scientifically  estab- 
lished; nor  does  the  scientist  concern  himself  seriously  with 
the  investigation  of  much  beyond  the  material  data  of  the 
laboratory.  It  is  usually  so;  democracy,  valuing  all  things, 
does  not  sufficiently  emphasize  the  more  important  ones, 
but  dwells  rather  on  the  less  —  as  the  French  language, 
accenting  all  syllables  alike,  comes  to  accent  the  last  syllable 
most.  Aristocracy,  valuing  preeminently  the  more  signifi- 
cant things,  neglects  unduly  the  commonplace.  Religion, 


450  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

intent  on  its  own  objects,  overlooks  the  question  of  impar- 
tial evidence,  and  is  accused  of  believing  because  it  wishes 
to  believe.  The  quarrel  will  never  be  settled  until  objective 
investigation,  guided  by  a  sense  of  the  superlative  impor- 
tance of  the  religious  questions,  gives  the  conclusions  de- 
manded by  religion.  And  without  this  guidance  that  result 
will  never  happen.  Facts  do  not  of  themselves  point  to 
anything;  they  must  be  arranged  in  the  proper  perspective 
by  the  human  inquirer. 

The  two  ultimate  axioms  penetrate  even  to  the  inmost 
character  of  a  man  and  the  little  acts  of  his  daily  life.  Is  he 
egotistic  ?  That  is  but  the  moral  side  of  a  theoretic  egoism 
which  regards  the  self  as  independent  of  its  fellows.  Is  he 
thoughtful  for  others  in  small  matters:  polite,  "giving 
place  unto  wrath,"  gentle,  considerate  ?  Then  is  he  realiz- 
ing the  law  of  internality.  Is  he  a  man  of  uncompromising 
principle,  adhering  through  thick  and  thin  to  his  ideals 
whatever  their  difficulties  may  be  ?  Then  he  is  an  exter- 
nalist. Is  he  on  the  other  hand  a  fashion-follower,  a  man 
whose  beliefs  always  are  found  to  agree  with  the  main  cur- 
rent of  his  time  ?  Then  he  is  a  thoroughgoing  internalist. 
Or  suppose  he  is  tactful  without  being  too  yielding,  insisting 
on  his  convictions  by  precept  and  example,  yet  not  forcing 
them  down  people's  throats  ?  In  that  case  he  is  that  per- 
fectly balanced  moral  character  which  is  the  adjustment  of 
the  antagonist  claims;  a  character  infrequent  indeed  in  a 
world  of  struggle  and  change,  where  the  reformer  must  ever 
be  an  externalist  and  the  lover  of  humanity  an  internalist. 

In  his  book  Pragmatism  Professor  James  aligned  the 
various  conflicts  of  human  thought  and  endeavour  some- 
what as  we  have  done,  under  the  rubrics  "  tender-minded  " 
and  "  tough-minded."  His  object  was  to  show  that  the 
pragmatic  attitude  is  able  to  reconcile  these  enemies,  and  is 


THE  DIAGNOSIS  OF  THE  DISEASE  451 

therefore  the  ideal  philosophy.  His  attempt  was  of  course 
a  noble  one ;  but  it  is  evident  enough  to  the  reader,  however 
sympathetic,  that  James  did  not  long  keep  the  synthetic 
spirit.  As  he  proceeded  through  the  problems  of  philosophy 
he  more  and  more  preferred  the  "  tough-minded  "  views; 
and  in  fact  we  have  had  to  admit  that  pragmatism,  exclud- 
ing the  static,  the  dogma,  the  concept,  as  it  does,  is  a  parti- 
san type.  Nevertheless  we  believe  that  James's  map  of 
philosophy  —  in  lieu  of  a  map  of  the  universe  —  is  a  sine 
qua  non  to  him  who  would  grasp  the  situation.  Of  his  book 
it  is  the  part  least  noticed,  perhaps,  in  professional  circles; 
but  that  should  hardly  count  against  it.  To  be  sure,  one's 
sense  of  justice  suggests  that  in  his  terms  James  a  little 
sacrificed  fairness  to  literary  effect.  Everybody  wants  to  be 
"  tough-minded  ";  tenderness  lies  too  near  to  softness,  to 
be  wholly  admirable  in  the  eyes  of  the  male  thinker.  James 
might  as  truly  have  called  the  tender  ones  long-minded  and 
the  tough  short-minded,  or  the  tender  broad-minded  and  the 
tough  narrow-minded.  The  distinction  he  had  in  mind 
seems  to  be  between  those  who  believe  most  in  ideals,  re- 
mote and  unrealized,  and  those  who  are  most  occupied  with 
the  concrete  and  imperfect.  It  almost  seems  as  if  we  ought 
to  call  the  tender-minded  people  the  strong,  and  the  tough, 
the  weak  ones,  since  it  takes  much  more  strength  of  char- 
acter to  adhere  to  one's  belief  in  the  ideals  than  to  declare 
the  reality  of  what  is  obvious,  the  imperfect  world.  Never- 
theless, comparisons  are  invidious  where  both  sides  are 
necessary.  While  we  may  not  acquiesce  in  James's  arrange- 
ment of  this  or  that  view  under  the  head  of  tender  or  tough, 
we  find  in  his  distinction  substantially  our  own.  The  tender 
minds  prefer  the  ideal  and  the  transcendent,  the  remote  and 
the  perfect;  they  are  aristocratic  souls.  The  tough  minds 
take  all  that  comes,  as  of  equal  value  to  the  truth-seeker: 


452  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

they  have  democratic  tempers.  As  empiricists,  they  test  all 
things  by  their  effect  upon  our  sense-organs  or  minds,  that 
is,  by  experience;  and  everything  is  the  appearance  of  it  in 
experience.  The  others,  as  rationalists,  adore  certain  prin- 
ciples, independent  of  their  appearance  or  concrete  bearings. 
The  two  schools  follow  the  axioms  of  internality  and  ex- 
ternality respectively.  The  contrast  is  between  self -evi- 
dence and  concrete  verification.  But  how  to  harmonize 
these  without  injustice  to  either,  philosophers,  no  more  than 
statesmen,  artists,  moralists,  or  anybody  else,  have  learned. 
Such  being  the  nature  of  the  malady  which  has  infected 
human  thought  and  conduct,  we  have  to  ask,  is  there  any 
escape  ?  Can  we  find  a  point  of  view  which  will  suggest  a 
cure  ? 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  REMEDY 

O  OMEHOW  the  real  world  itself  has  harmonized  these 
O  antagonisms:  if  it  did  not,  it  would  be  instantly  an- 
nulled. As  a  man  who  contradicts  himself  takes  away  our 
belief  in  what  he  has  just  said,  so  a  reality  which  was  incon- 
sistent would  remove  what  it  put  down  —  and  we  should 
have  no  experience.  Reality  has  solved  the  problem;  man 
has  not,  and  so  man  does  not  know  what  reality  properly  is. 
The  reason  man  has  not  learned  to  adjust  himself  better  to 
his  great  environment  is  that  he  has  not  learned  the  true 
nature  of  that  environment.  He  does  not  yet  know  the 
essence  of  reality.  For  it  is  just  the  essence  of  reality,  that 
which  makes  it  real  rather  than  a  human  idea,  that  we  are 
now  in  quest  of:  it  might  be  said  to  be  the  definition  of 
reality  that  the  antinomies  have  driven  us  to  seek.  Since 
what  condemns  to  failure  all  our  attempts  at  a  map  of 
reality,  is  just  our  inability  to  settle  the  conflict,  would  not 
the  settlement  give  us  the  key-position,  the  fundamental 
principle  on  which  the  map  is  to  be  constructed  ?  Thus  at 
the  lowest  point  of  our  inquiry  a  promise  is  vouchsafed :  if 
we  cure  the  disease,  we  shall  also  do  much  more,  for  we  shall 
have  discovered  the  scheme  of  the  map  we  set  out  to  draw. 
In  laying  off  our  burden  we  are  enabled  to  leap  across  the 
gulf  that  has  held  us  back  from  touching  the  real. 

Moreover,  we  may  be  sure  that  the  contradictions  are 
soluble  for  our  own  finite  thought.  Our  thought  gets  its 
material  from  reality,  and  it  cannot  really  get  it  anywhere 

453 


454  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

else.  If  reality  marries  two  antagonists,  thought  has  no 
power  to  forbid  the  banns;  its  sole  function  is  to  follow 
reality.  If  thought  could  not  be  equated  to  reality  —  as 
Mr.  Bradley  says  —  then  it  would  be  because  thought  did 
not  follow  as  it  should,  but  revolted  or  tried  something  on 
its  own  hook,  or  some  such  vagary.  For  heaven  knows  what 
reason,  it  has  essayed  to  work  in  vacua — and  the  antinomies 
have  resulted.  The  dialectic  must  then  be  soluble  —  not 
only  in  reality,  as  the  Hegelians  have  taught  us,  but  also  in 
our  particular  vexed  understandings.  That  last  is  alone 
what  we  seek.  It  is  true  in  reflection,  as  in  life,  that  the 
only  escape  from  the  dialectic  which  is  of  any  value  is  the 
actual  deliverance  in  concrete  situations  here  and  now.  Of 
what  use  to  government  is  a  Utopia  which  cannot  be  put 
into  operation  ?  How  does  it  help  a  sick  man  to  know  that 
God  is  well  while  he  is  not  ?  What  satisfaction  can  the 
human  mind  take  in  a  solution  of  the  dialectic  which  it 
cannot  understand  in  detail  ? 

The  antagonist  principles,  we  are  told,  deny  each  other. 
The  one  says  that  a  fact  is  itself,  indifferent  to  its  relations. 
The  other  says  that  a  fact  is  not  indifferent  to  its  surround- 
ings, but  is  in  and  through  them  constituted.  Both  are 
true;  both  cannot  be  true.  Of  these  two  last  statements 
one  concerns  reality,  and  is  positive;  the  other  is  a  negation, 
and  its  sanction  lies  not  in  objective  evidence.  According 
to  the  objective  evidence,  indeed,  they  could  both  be  true  - 
for  they  are.  Why  then  do  we  declare  that  they  cannot  ? 
Because,  we  say,  the  one  is  a  flat  denial  of  the  other.  But 
is  it  indubitably  seen  to  be  a  denial,  as  the  truth  of  the  two 
axioms  is  indubitably  verified  in  our  daily  thought  and 
life  ?  No,  it  is  not;  for  denial  and  contradiction  have  a 
reflective  character;  they  are  not  objectively  observed,  but 
are  phenomena  of  thinking,  and  thinking  is  just  the  region 


THE  REMEDY  455 

where  errors  come  in.  The  allegation  of  contradiction  is 
thus  thrown  open  to  doubt. 

The  external  principle  says  —  to  put  it  symbolically  — 
A  is  A .  The  internal  principle  says  A  is  RB  —  where  KB 
means,  a  certain  relation  toward,  or  function  of,  something 
else,  B.  Let  us  replace  RB  by  C.  Then  the  alleged  con- 
tradiction consists  in  the  statement  "  A  is  C  and  A  is  A  "; 
for  C  is  other  than  A  and  hence  "  A  is  C  "  =  "  A  is  other 
than  A,"  or  not  A.  That  A  is  something  else  besides  A, 
something  different  from  A,  contradicts  -4's  identity  with 
itself.  Sameness  excludes  difference.  That  is  the  contra- 
diction reduced  to  lowest  terms.  Mr.  Bradley  says,  "  The 
simple  identification  of  the  diverse  is  precisely  that  which 
one  means  by  contradiction  "  (Mind,  1909,  p.  496).  And 
Mr.  Bosanquet  declares  that  contradiction  "  consists  in 
'  differents  '  being  ascribed  to  the  same  term,  while  no 
distinction  is  alleged  within  that  term  such  as  to  make  it 
capable  of  receiving  them."  (Logic,  2d  ed.,  I,  p.  224.) 
St.  Thomas,  too,  had  the  same  idea:  "  Quae  secundum  se 
diversa  sunt  non  conveniunt  in  aliquod  unum,  nisi  per 
aliquam  causam  adunantem  ipsa."  (Summa  Theologica, 
part  I,  question  3,  art.  7.)  In  the  last  analysis,  sameness 
and  difference  are  deemed  incompatible.  This  is  the  part  of 
the  organism  in  which  lives  the  germ  of  that  great  malady; 
and  our  task  is  now  to  attack  that  germ. 

The  problem  is  a  very  abstract  one  —  in  other  words,  it 
is  a  very  simple  one,  quite  unlike  the  complex  issues  of  daily 
life.  But  it  is  not  always  in  the  complex  situations  in  which 
they  occur,  that  the  battles  of  life  are  won  or  lost;  it  is  often 
in  the  preparation,  the  simple,  unnoticed  decisions,  the 
small  matters  which  go  to  make  up  stable  character.  If  to 
be  faithful  in  that  which  is  least  is  to  be  faithful  also  in 
much,  then  our  contention  is  not  unlikely,  that  the  solution 


45 6  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

of  this  abstract  difficulty  will  entail  that  of  the  concreter 
issues. 

The  whole  root  of  the  trouble  lies  indeed  in  the  simplest  of 
all  things  in  the  world,  namely,  a  quite  arbitrary  dictum. 
Its  simplicity  lies  in  its  arbitrariness;  the  dictum  stands 
alone,  ungrounded,  unsupported  in  any  way  whatsoever. 
That  sameness  and  difference  exclude  each  other  is  the 
purest  dogma,  a  fulmination  out  of  the  darkness,  justified 
by  no  utility  or  self-evidence.  Search  as  we  may,  we  find  no 
argument  offered,  in  all  the  long  history  of  thought,  to 
excuse  it.  That  a  thing  cannot  be  itself  while  at  the  same 
time  being  much  else  —  this  has  been  treated  as  a  sacrosanct 
principle;  but  we  do  not  hesitate  to  say  it  is  a  priori,  need- 
less, and  in  fact  the  case  par  excellence  of  thought  working 
in  vacuo.  In  vacuo,  because  it  is  not  in  any  way  confirmed 
by  observation.  We  observe  in  every  moment  of  our  waking 
lives  that  two  things  are  the  same  while  at  the  same  time 
different.  Two  oranges  are  of  the  same  colour,  yet  of  dif- 
ferent shapes;  a  particular  stone  is  now  in  my  hand,  now 
flying  through  the  air,  yet  the  same  stone;  you  are  the  same 
man  today  that  you  were  yesterday  in  spite  of  added  expe- 
riences. Always  we  witness  the  opposite  of  this  dictum,  yet 
men  have  felt,  or  thought  they  felt,  a  certain  inner  compul- 
sion to  utter  it.  Thought  seems  to  have  set  up  a  rule  of  its 
own,  independent  of  observation  —  and  doing  so,  has 
allowed  itself  to  become  divorced  from  reality.  If  we  spoke 
in  the  old  religious  terms,  we  should  say  that  pride  of 
intellect  had  debarred  man  from  attaining  the  knowledge 
he  sought. 

Of  course  it  is  not  the  dialecticians  alone  who  have  done 
this.  They  are  only  those  who  are  honest  and  clear-headed 
enough  to  see  that  they  have  done  it  and  to  say  so.  Other 
thinkers,  as  we  have  now  many  times  pointed  out,  implicitly 


THE  REMEDY  457 

deny  that  anything  can  become  another  without  loss  of  its 
identity.  In  the  field  of  philosophy,  we  find  a  nominalist 
denying  that  the  colour  of  one  orange  can  be  numerically 
the  same  as  that  of  another,  or  a  Great  Objectivist  alleging 
that  consciousness  cannot  be  unique  because  it  is  definable 
in  terms  of  its  objects;  in  the  field  of  practice,  the  modern 
citizen  affirms  that  the  individual  cannot  display  any  indif- 
ference to  society  because  he  is  essentially  a  social  being; 
in  religion,  we  are  taught  that  one  cannot  exercise  faith 
unless  the  dogmas  remain  mysterious  —  and  so  on.  In 
fact,  to  accept  our  contention  is  to  go  against  the  time- 
honoured  exclusiveness  with  which  man  has  pursued  practi- 
cally all  of  his  aims.  Our  simple  remedy,  as  simple  as  the 
evil  it  would  meet,  seems  hard  enough  to  swallow,  when  we 
reckon  the  revolutionary  consequences  of  the  admission. 
And  yet  if  it  is  true,  all  those  consequences  are  as  inevitable 
as  they  are  disturbing.  And  that  is  perhaps  one  of  the 
surest  indications  we  could  have,  that  we  are  upon  the  right 
track;  for  we  are  seeking  a  philosophy  which  will  make 
concrete  differences  to  the  life  of  man. 

We  must  frankly  acknowledge,  in  the  first  place,  that 
certain  considerations  look  to  be  against  us.  It  is  easy 
enough  to  say  in  a  rough  conversational  way  that  two  pieces 
of  paper  have,  to  all  appearance,  the  same  degree  of  white 
colour.  But  take  the  statement  seriously  and  see  where  you 
land.  Absolutely,  numerically  the  same  ?  Many  people 
would  prefer  the  non-committal  word  similar.  Does  not 
that  seem  fairer  than  to  credit  a  conceptual  thing,  white- 
colour,  appearing  unaltered,  unaffected  by  the  peculiarities 
of  the  particular  papers  ?  Why,  to  do  so  is  to  break  the  rule 
of  internal  relations!  No  two  things  can  be  the  same,  for 
then  they  are  unaffected  by  the  very  distinctions  which 
make  them  two.  Perhaps  there  is,  after  all,  good  reason  for 
the  dictum  above  condemned. 


45  8  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Certain  other  instances  seem  more  striking.  You  and  I 
are  different  persons  —  does  not  our  very  individuality,  our 
self -hood,  rest  upon  that  difference  ?  We  could  not  be  the 
same  and  retain  our  personal  identity.  "  Two  souls  with 
but  a  single  thought,"  etc.  —  that  would  so  far  be  not  two 
but  one.  Absorption  into  the  One  of  the  Buddhist  or  mystic 
means  loss  of  individuality.  In  the  personal  life,  at  any  rate, 
difference  precludes  sameness.  The  value  of  a  person  lies  in 
his  uniqueness;  and  that  value  is  destroyed  by  sameness,  by 
uniformity  with  others.  But  we  need  not  go  so  high  as 
personality.  This  square  foot  of  ground  whereon  I  stand  is 
quite  distinct  from  one  next  it;  and  that  distinction  could 
not  possibly  permit  identity  between  the  two.  If  I  prove  an 
alibi,  then  I  could  not  have  committed  the  crime  of  which  I 
am  accused.  If  red  and  green  are  diverse,  how  could  they  be 
the  same  ?  If  a  circle  is  round,  how  could  it  be  identified 
with  a  square  ?  And  we  might  thus  proceed  indefinitely. 
No;  whatever  else  may  be  said  of  sameness,  it  is  apparently 
going  against  all  experience  and  common  sense  to  say  that 
difference  does  not  exclude  it.  This  dictum  is  not  only  self- 
evident;  it  is  at  the  basis  of  all  the  values  of  life. 

Theoretical  and  practical  motives  would  seem  to  unite  in 
supporting  that  "  simple  arbitrary  dogma  "  as  we  called  it. 
And  yet  we  must  believe  these  motives  to  be  illusion,  and 
founded  on  illusion.  Let  us  examine  them. 

The  logical  reason  for  deeming  sameness  and  difference 
inconsistent,  we  found  to  be  none  other  than  the  principle  of 
internal  relations.  We  are  told  that  the  quality  of  one 
thing  cannot  be  the  same  as  that  of  another,  since  it  will  be 
affected  by  the  other  attributes  of  the  things  in  which  it 
resides.  This  is  the  view  of  extreme  nominalism,  which  we 
saw  in  Chapter  VIII;  nominalism  in  the  exclusive  sense. 
How  can  the  shade  of  one  apple  be  exactly  the  same 


THE  REMEDY  459 

as  that  of  another  ?     Being  in  different  places,  the  light 
will  not  play  alike  on  them;   differing  ever  so  slightly 
in  texture  of  skin,  size,  or  shape,  the  light-waves  will  not  be 
reflected  and  absorbed  in  identical  ways  in  both.     The 
identity  is  destroyed  by  the  differences.     And  have  we 
ground  for  supposing  that  there  exist  in  the  universe  any 
two  shades  of  red  exactly  alike  ?    Surely  not.    On  the  other 
hand,  we  might  ask,  putting  all  questions  of  logic  aside, 
have  we  any  empirical  certainty  that  there  never  have 
existed  two  perfectly  similar  instances  of  red  colour  ?    Or 
two  sticks  of  absolutely  the  same  length,  if  measurements 
could  be  suitably  taken  ?    Or  two  candles  giving  just  equal 
amounts  of  light  ?    The  principle  of  internality  is  not  able 
to  prevent  such  a  thing  happening.    It  says  only  that  the 
different  surroundings  must  affect  each  instance  differently; 
giving  a  resultant  difference  on  the  whole.    Suppose  the  light 
of  the  sun  strikes  apple  A  a  little  stronger  than  it  does  apple 
B .    Then  A's  red  will  be  a  brighter  red  than  B  's.    But  do  we 
not  speak  of  a  brighter  or  less  bright  shade  of  one  and  the 
same  tint  ?    The  identity  of  the  tint  has  not  disappeared. 
It  has  been  overlaid  by  a  new  and  additional  quality,  but 
the  overlay  does  not  annihilate  the  original.    Sometimes  it 
may,  of  course:   as  when  one  daubs  the  apple  with  green 
paint.    Nevertheless  there  is  no  necessity,  no  logical  com- 
pulsion forcing  us  to  think  that  always  the  difference  cuts 
into  the  sameness.    It  may  affect  it  as  much  as  you  please 
without  in  any  degree  diminishing  it;  viz.,  by  adding  to  it 
some  qualification;  a  new  shade,  a  limitation  or  extension 
of  its  area,  a  greater  warmth  in  one  apple,  etc.    So  I  may  be 
influenced  by  my  friend's  argument  for  government  owner- 
ship, yet  respect  as  much  as  ever  the  instinct  of  property  — 
which  means  only  that  I  seek  some  plan  by  which  these  two 
may  work  together  and  supplement  each  other.    Or  I  may 


460  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

feel  the  claim  of  dogma  while  yet  I  am  influenced  by  the 
desire  to  see  the  interconnection  of  the  various  dogmas,  and 
their  agreement  with  scientific  principles.  Cannot  romantic 
beauty  reside  in  a  face  with  classic  features  ?  Cannot  a 
man  work  directly  for  some  end  that  benefits  both  his  fel- 
lows and  himself  —  as  when  the  physician  discovers  the 
antidote  for  a  poison,  or  the  inventor  perfects  a  more  efficient 
system  of  lighting  ?  Is  it  not  the  teaching  of  Freud  and 
Holt  that  good  conduct  is  that  which  does  not  suppress  one 
purpose  by  another,  but  organizes  them  into  a  system  in 
which  all  are  fulfilled  ?  Every  such  instance  —  and  with 
the  progress  of  civilization  their  number  increases  —  is  a 
case  where  one  purpose,  or  quality,  or  interest,  is  affected  by 
another  without  being  destroyed.  Indeed,  the  doctrine  that 
one  entity  cannot  be  influenced  by  another  without  losing 
its  self -identity  is  a  pure  superstition,  a  relic  of  barbarism. 
It  is  the  old  logic  of  the  "  war  of  all  against  all  "  which  is 
being  today,  thank  Heaven !  so  widely  replaced  by  the  logic 
of  cooperation.  But  that  latter  does  not  yet  seem  to  have 
penetrated  into  the  halls  of  philosophy  —  so  remote  has 
philosophy  become  from  the  currents  of  life. 

Still  the  exclusive  logic  dies  hard;  and  it  has  more  to  say 
for  itself  than  this.  Our  instances  may  be  called  loose, 
inaccurate;  who  can  say  offhand  that  romantic  beauty  is 
not  somewhat  lessened  by  too  perfect  an  outline  ?  We  are 
not  stirred  by  the  compositions  of  Mozart.  We  do  not  listen 
to  the  music-dramas  of  Wagner  with  a  sense  of  profound 
repose.  We  do  not  find  scientific  discoveries  remarkable  for 
their  frequency  among  Catholics,  nor  invincible  faith  in 
God  the  rule  among  biologists  and  physicists.  If  it  comes  to 
the  heaping  up  of  cases,  we  surely  find  a  majority  of  them 
showing  that  the  one  interest,  when  it  becomes  pretty 
strong,  destroys  the  other.  And  this  difficulty,  if  not  im- 


THE  REMEDY  461 

possibility,  of  uniting  our  practical  motives  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  the  theoretical  difficulty  about  sameness  and 
difference  must  be  well  grounded. 

No,  we  must  admit,  you  cannot  get  a  ringing  conclusion 
from  the  concrete  examples.  They  are  too  inexact.  If  we 
point  out  cases  where  one  party,  or  one  set  of  motives,  has 
influenced  the  other  to  join  hands  with  it,  you  may  always 
retort  that  each  has  suffered  some  loss,  or  that  the  har- 
monization is  but  a  compromise;  or  you  may  asseverate 
that  the  apparent  harmonies  are  so  exceptional  as  to  prove 
the  rule  opposite.  We  must  return  to  the  simple  abstract 
case.  And  there  the  dialectic  lies  in  wait  with  a  new  argu- 
ment; this  time  a  reductio  ad  absurdum. 

Suppose  the  sun's  light  qualifies  the  original  red  of  the 
apple  with  a  new  shade.  Then  this  shade  must,  by  the  prin- 
ciple of  internality,  work  upon  the  red  tint.  How  can  it 
show  any  effect  upon  that  tint  without  changing  it  ?  And 
what  is  to  change  but  to  destroy,  at  least  in  part  ?  We 
answer,  it  is  not  necessarily  that.  Destruction  is  not  the 
only  sort  of  change.  A  thing  may  be  qualified  by  a  positive 
addition.  Effectiveness  is  not  best  shown  by  killing  and 
maiming,  but  by  new  creation,  by  adding  to  the  sum  of  life. 
It  is  really  absurd  to  speak  of  one  thing,  one  person,  affecting 
another  destructively.  Destruction  is  remoyal  of  what  is 
real  —  there  is  nothing  to  show;  it  is  not  effect  but  absence 
of  effect.  This  however  is  probably  too  simple  and  too  con- 
trary to  accepted  standards  to  be  admitted  until  illustrated; 
which  we  proceed  to  do.  Now,  we  do  not  know  just  how  the 
play  of  light  and  shade  would  act  upon  the  colour.  But  no 
doubt  it  would  give  rise  to  some  new  quality,  a  positive  one 
added  to  the  red  and  the  lighter  shade;  a  third  one  beside 
these  other  two.  Imagine,  e.  g.,  that  it  is  the  quality  of 
having  a  charming  effect.  The  brighter  red,  perhaps,  is 


462  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

more  pleasing  than  the  duller.  At  the  same  time  this  charm 
of  the  bright  red  apple  must  have  its  effect  upon  the  redness 
and  brightness  —  at  least  upon  them  as  perceived.  Perhaps 
the  brightness  is  a  little  increased.  Then  one  more  quality 
has  been  enrolled  on  the  list.  And  this  too  must  have  its 
additive  result  upon  the  rest  —  we  dare  not  say  just  what  it 
is,  but  the  principle  of  internality  assures  us  that  the  charm 
is  not  there  for  nothing.  How  much  further  must  we  go  ? 
Clearly  there  is  no  limit ;  the  effects  must  multiply  even  to 
infinity.  And  now,  says  the  objector,  behold  the  absurdity; 
for  the  sum  total  of  these  qualities  is  really  present,  all  at 
once  in  this  particular  finite  apple.  It  is  our  old  friend  the 
complete  infinite:  a  patent  self-contradiction. 

So  it  appears  that  if  we  do  not  straightway  confess  that 
the  differences  kill  the  sameness,  we  are  driven  into  the  con- 
tradiction of  the  completed  infinite.  Yet  a  little  reflection 
shows  that  this  argument  must  be  a  vicious  circle.  If,  as  we 
saw  in  Chapter  XI,  that  contradiction  is  simply  a  result  of 
the  antagonism  between  the  two  great  axioms  of  internality 
and  externality,  and  if  that  antagonism  rests  in  turn  upon  the 
alleged  hostility  between  sameness  and  difference,  how  can 
the  last  be  proved  by  appeal  to  the  first?  In  fact,  the  com- 
pleted infinite  is  not  contradictory  at  all,  if  once  we  grant 
that  sameness  and  difference  do  not  belie  each  other.  The 
sameness  runs  undiminished  through  all  the  infinite  list  of 
qualities,  whatever  their  differences.  The  apple  is  red ;  it  is 
bright  red  and  pleasing;  it  is  bright  red  and  pleasing  and 
some  other  quality;  and  so  on.  What  then  do  we  mean  by 
saying  that  it  is  complete  while  all  its  qualities  are  so  many 
they  can  never  be  complete  ?  Simply  that  every  added 
quality,  is  of  the  same  old  apple;  is  it,  in  truth,  while  yet 
the  number  of  novelties  overlaying  the  sameness  is  endless. 
The  completeness  signifies  the  fact  that  the  sameness  re- 


THE  REMEDY  463 

mains  undestroyed;  the  incompleteness,  that  ever  new  and 
positive  differences  may  be  added.  The  series  is  complete 
at  every  stage,  for  every  novelty  discovered  is  a  predicate 
of  —  identified  with  —  the  original  datum,  the  red  apple. 
It  is  incomplete  at  every  stage,  in  the  sense  that  no  amount 
of  identity  precludes  an  additional  difference  which  we  pro- 
ceed to  discover.  But  for  that  very  reason  the  incomplete- 
ness does  not  give  the  lie  to  completeness.  It  seems  to  do  so 
only  because  it  suggests  to  our  minds  that  always  some 
qualities  of  the  apple,  being  different  from  all  yet  enu- 
merated, are  left  out — as  if  they  could  not  be  there.  But 
when  we  remember  that  they  are  sure  to  be  identified  with, 
as  predicates  of,  the  datum  we  started  with,  we  can  see  that 
they  are  not  left  out.  That  datum  already  includes  them. 
Their  incompleteness,  in  short,  does  not  mean  that  they 
are  not  all  there,  but  that  being  there  they  generate,  as  it 
were,  ever  new  aspects  of  the  said  object.  And  these  new 
aspects,  again,  however  many  and  divergent,  are  always  to  be 
identified  with  the  original  datum.  There  is  then  a  question- 
begging  character  in  the  word  incompleteness;  it  is  uncon- 
sciously assumed  to  connote  that  some  terms  of  the  series 
are  never  reached.  But  they  are  all  reached;  only  when 
reached  they  at  once  reveal  a  novel  element,  a  diversity 
which  enlarges  the  already  completed  thing.  The  whole 
difficulty  turns  upon  our  interpreting  incompleteness  as 
if  it  denied  some  real  part  of  the  object  —  an  interpreta- 
tion which  is  of  a  piece  with  that  root-error  that  difference 
forbids  sameness.  Arbitrary  exclusion  once  more ! 

Even  supposing  this  solution  were  admitted,  however,  the 
way  is  not  closed.  Common  sense  steps  up  and  says  "  I 
don't  care  anything  about  your  infinite  regress,  but  I  see 
that  difference  cannot  truly  coexist  with  sameness.  For  the 
one  apple  differs  from  the  other  in  one  respect,  and  is  the 


464  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

same  in  another  respect.  The  apples  are  the  same  in  redness, 
diverse  in  shape;  etc.  They  couldn't  be  the  same  and  dif- 
ferent in  one  and  the  same  respect.  Imagine,  if  you  can, 
two  apples  of  the  same  colour,  yet  different  in  colour! "  The 
objection  looks  very  formidable.  It  is  due  to  the  principle  of 
externality,  as  the  first  one  was  due  to  that  of  externality. 
It  is  not  based  upon  the  mutual  influence,  but  upon  the 
necessity  of  keeping  intact  the  sameness  and  the  difference. 
Sunder  them,  don't  let  them  get  together,  lest  the  one  in- 
fluence the  other  and  destroy  it !  The  technical  term  which 
expresses  this  sundering  is  "  respect  "  or  "  aspect."  One 
aspect  of  a  thing,  it  is  usually  believed,  may  be  X  and  an- 
other the  very  contradiction  of  X;  but  it  matters  not, 
because  they  are  separated;  the  wall  of  the  thing  is  between 
them,  and  they  are  on  different  sides  of  it. 

Now  common  sense  is  based  upon  practical  needs,  and  is 
in  general,  of  course,  sound.  But  it  seldom  does  justice  to 
the  need  of  understanding;  and  that  is  the  case  here.  "  As- 
pect "  is  simply  a  useful  device  to  prevent  us  from  sensing  a 
contradiction  and  diverting  otherwise  useful  energy  toward 
it;  we  must  go  on  with  observations  and  get  the  concrete 
information  which  life  and  science  call  for.  The  dialectic 
interferes  with  the  business  of  common  sense  —  away  with 
any  appearance  of  it !  To  the  logical  point  of  view,  however, 
the  whole  thing  is  a  makeshift.  The  aspect-device  solves  no 
difficulty  for  the  intellect.  Do  not  the  various  aspects  con- 
stitute the  thing  ?  The  colour,  form,  brightness,  scent,  etc., 
of  the  apple  are  the  apple.  However  much  of  an  underlying 
substance  is  the  real  apple  over  against  its  properties,  it  is 
by  the  principle  of  internality  identical  with  all  those  prop- 
erties. Let  the  two  be  identical  in  colour  and  dissimilar  in 
shape.  Nevertheless,  the  apples  are  their  forms  and  their 
colours;  if  they  are  identical  in  colour  they  are  so  far  not 


THE  REMEDY  465 

distinct  from  each  other.  It  is  logically  just  as  bad  as  if  the 
apple  were  utterly  simple.  Mr.  Bradley  has  made  much  of 
this  plea,  showing  that  the  thing  and  its  aspects  offers  a 
self-contradiction.  And  indeed  it  does,  unless  you  affirm  at 
the  outset  that  any  two  things  may  be  the  same  and  also 
different  —  without  regard  to  aspects  or  sides. 

Ah,  but  now,  one  says,  you  are  not  talking  good  sense. 
Things  never  do  show  sameness  and  difference  in  one  and  the 
same  respect  at  the  same  time.  If  one  red  is  identical  in 
colour  with  another,  it  cannot  differ  from  it  in  colour.  If 
one  triangle  has  exactly  the  same  shape  as  another,  it  cannot 
differ  from  it  in  shape,  but  only  in  size  or  position.  Always 
the  difference  is  found  to  lie  in  a  distinct  aspect  of  the  thing 
from  that  of  the  sameness.  This  is  an  empirical  matter, 
logic  or  no  logic.  It  is  not  open  to  doubt.  But  we  reply, 
what  do  you  make  of  the  resemblance  between  yellow  and 
green  ?  Do  they  not  show  a  sameness  in  colour  and  also 
difference  in  colour  ?  Perhaps  it  would  be  well  to  ask  what 
we  mean  by  the  "  aspect  "  of  a  thing;  for  even  though  com- 
mon sense  is  justified  in  distinguishing  the  aspects,  and 
empirically  well  grounded,  it  may  be  that  they  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  consistency  or  inconsistency  of  the  thing. 
Now  generally  what  we  call  the  aspects  of  a  thing  are  its 
relations  to  other  things.  The  colour  of  a  rose  is  its  effect 
upon  my  visual  organs,  the  weight  its  tendency  to  approach 
the  centre  of  the  earth,  the  odour  its  effect  upon  my  organs 
of  smell,  the  form  upon  my  faculty  of  space-perception,  etc. 
Each  aspect  expresses  the  relation  between  the  one  object 
and  a  certain  other  entity ;  their  diversity  is  due  to  the  diver- 
sity of  the  entities  to  which  the  said  object  is  related.  And 
because  those  external  entities  are  so  clearly  distinct,  we 
think  there  is  no  contradiction  in  saying  the  object  is  mani- 
fold; if  we  concentrated  attention  upon  the  unity  of  the 


466  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

object  by  itself,  we  should  deem  it  inconsistent  that  it  is 
manifold.  The  actual  ground,  however,  for  attributing  to 
the  one  thing  different  aspects  is  not  any  such  recondite 
motive  as  the  avoidance  of  dialectic.  Everybody  makes  the 
attribution,  but  very  few  have  felt  the  danger  of  the  dia- 
lectic. The  real  motive  is  that  the  thing  is  empirically 
found  to  have  many  relations.  The  aspects  are  distinguished 
with  this  simple  empirical  motive;  they  are  irrelevant  to  the 
problem  of  the  dialectic.  It  is  quite  possible  that  some 
object  be  experienced  which  is  given  as  one  and  yet  as  at  the 
same  time  internally  manifold;  manifold  because  it  offers 
within  itself  a  composite  character.  And  more :  there  are 
such  instances.  Purple  is  one  colour,  yet  purple  contains 
two  different  colours,  red  and  blue.  A  musical  chord  —  or 
discord  —  is  given  to  us  as  one  sound,  yet  it  contains  inter- 
nal diversity.  Do  we  abolish  the  contradiction  between 
purple  being  reddish  and  purple  being  bluish  by  saying  that 
it  is  red  in  one  aspect,  blue  in  another  ?  There  are  no  dif- 
ferent sense-faculties  for  us  to  refer  these  different  colours 
to,  in  order  to  separate  the  conflicting  qualities.  Of  course 
if  we  like  we  may  say  that  purple  is  red  in  one  aspect,  blue 
in  another;  but  then  "  aspect  "  is  not  used  in  the  above 
relative  sense.  No:  here  is  a  case  where  two  entities  are 
plainly  different  and  yet  are  fused  into  a  unity  which  over- 
lays the  difference  without  destroying  it.  And  the  case 
shows  that  the  aspect-device  is  not  always  available,  as 
common  sense  thinks,  to  dissolve  the  antinomy. 

Indeed,  as  we  already  have  tried  to  show,  it  never  could 
solve  a  contradiction,  if  there  were  one  there.  But  there  are 
so  many  instances  where  it  is  applicable,  and  where  its 
specious  claims  are  tempting  to  a  surface  inspection,  that 
we  make  an  over-hasty  inductive  generalization  and  con- 
clude that  all  dialectic  contradictions  are  avoided  in  this 


THE  REMEDY  467 

way.  Meanwhile  no  evidence  has  been  given  to  prove  that 
there  is  any  dialectical  contradiction.  The  resort  to  aspects 
was  thought  to  indicate  it;  but  we  find  that  that  resort  is 
dictated  by  empirical  motives;  and  that  even  if  it  did  serve 
to  remove  the  antagonisms,  there  are  cases  where  it  could 
have  no  efficacy.  But  we  must  go  further;  those  cases 
are  not  sporadic,  but  legion.  Practically  every  colour  that 
we  see  is  a  mixture.  We  almost  never  see  a  colour  that  is 
not,  either  obviously  or  after  slight  training  of  the  eye,  com- 
posite. The  familiar  colours  of  the  rose,  the  violet,  of  the 
sky,  the  sea,  the  clouds,  the  sunset,  the  human  face  and  eye, 
the  clothes,  the  buildings,  the  foliage  —  few  or  none  of 
these  there  are,  which  do  not  present  a  fusion  of  several 
colours  into  one.  In  them  we  see  a  red  that  is  at  the  same 
time  yellow  without  ceasing  to  be  red,  a  green  that  is  blue 
without  losing  its  green  quality  —  and  so  on.  So  far  from 
its  being  true  that  red  cannot  be  blue  while  yet  it  is  red,  we 
find  that  it  usually  is  something  else  besides  itself,  and  in  the 
very  same  aspect  in  which  itself  is  found  to  reside.  The  two 
apples  in  our  illustration  may  very  well  possess  an  identical 
red  and  at  the  same  time  be  different  in  respect  to  colour  — 
if,  say,  one  had  a  slight  purplish  tinge  and  the  other  were 
pure  saturated  red.  We  do  not  refer  the  sameness  and  the 
difference  to  different  sides  of  the  things.  And  not  of  colours 
alone  does  our  assertion  hold.  How  many  sounds  do  we 
hear  that  are  not  at  once  several  different  sounds  ?  Not 
musical  chords  only  are  composite,  but  the  rumblings  of  the 
street,  the  soughing  of  the  wind,  and  the  voices  of  our  fel- 
low men;  yet  these  are  severally  heard,  often  enough,  as  one 
sound.  Of  aesthetic  effects  this  sort  of  thing  is  notoriously 
true.  A  painting  is  pleasing,  but  tormenting,  stirring,  yet 
also  restful  —  indeed  who  shall  enunciate  the  effects  upon 
the  cultured  beholder  of  a  work  of  art  ?  Further  illustration 


468  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

is  easy,  and  perhaps  needless.  The  work  of  James,  Dewey, 
and  other  opponents  of  Platonism  has  emphasized  the  in- 
exactness of  the  concrete  things;  we  should  prefer  to  put  it 
in  positive  terms  and  call  it  their  richly  composite  nature. 
But  we  promised  to  stick  to  the  simpler,  more  abstract 
examples;  let  us,  therefore,  exemplify  no  more  at  present. 

Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  the  cases  of  sameness-in-dif- 
ference  are  confined  to  the  psychological  field.  We  are 
talking  about  objects:  the  colour  of  the  rose  is  as  objective 
as  its  form  (cf .  Chapter  IV) ;  and  the  motion  of  a  projectile 
acted  upon  by  many  simultaneous  forces  is  objective  enough 
to  satisfy  even  a  materialist.  Even  were  it  true  only  in  the 
mental  realm,  that  would  be  sufficient  for  our  purposes; 
mental  facts  are  as  real  (cf.  Chapter  VIII)  as  physical. 
But  we  are  not  now  asking  about  anything  else  but  the 
general  possibility  of  sameness  permitting  difference;  and 
we  have  detected  no  reason  against  it.  We  are  not  asserting 
that  any  quality  can  combine  with  any  other  quality.  We 
are  only  concerned  to  deny  that  in  a  logical  point  of  view 
none  can  —  that  is  the  claim  of  the  dialectician.  We  on  the 
other  hand  acknowledge  that  there  are  cases  where  one 
quality,  taking  on  another,  is  apparently  destroyed.  Red 
plus  green  usually  destroys  the  red :  the  resulting  grey  has 
no  resemblance,  so  far  as  we  can  discern,  with  either  of  the 
originals.  And  let  no  one  object  that  we  are  dogmatically 
calling  resemblance  absolute  identity.  Of  course  it  is  so 
only  for  analysis;  but  we  have  found  (Chapter  VIII)  that 
analysis,  provided  it  is  not  incorrect,  gives  truth.  Again, 
some  sounds  "  interfere  "  with  each  other;  some  human 
qualities  work  directly  against  others,  as  when  jealousy 
overcomes  kindness,  or  love  of  comfort  inhibits  the  love  of 
knowledge.  The  clearest  cases  of  such  incompatibility, 
perhaps,  are  the  elementary  physical  and  spatial  ones.  If 


THE  REMEDY  469 

the  end  of  a  stick  is  in  one  place,  it  is  so  far  not  in  another; 
if  a  body  is  falling  to  earth,  it  cannot  at  the  same  time  rise 
from  the  earth.  Space  and  matter  are  the  great  depositories 
of  incompatibility,  and  no  doubt  it  is  due  to  a  preoccupation 
with  the  material  world,  not  outgrown  even  by  idealists, 
that  the  logic  of  exclusion  has  remained  potent  in  the  higher 
realms.  Yet  even  in  that  world  things  are,  so  to  speak, 
loosening  up.  Who  has  not  in  the  laboratory  seen  water 
boiling  and  freezing  at  once  ?  And  do  not  some  psy- 
chologists claim  that  olive-green  is  partly  red  ?  (Cf .  Holt, 
The  New  Realism,  p.  334.)  The  rigid  system  of  mutual  ex- 
clusions that  we  have  believed  in  is  growing  softer.  Our 
beliefs  about  it  have  to  some  extent  been  liberated  by  the 
non-Euclidean  geometries,  and  still  more  by  later  researches 
into  the  underlying  postulates  of  mathematics.  That 
parallelism  between  straight  lines  excludes  their  meeting, 
is  no  longer  a  necessity  in  itself;  that  2+3  =  5  is  found  to 
depend  upon  presuppositions  which  are  not  in  themselves 
so  absolutely  certain  as  we  are  used  to  believe  that  sum- 
mation to  be.  Perhaps  some  day  a  system  will  be  discovered 
which  while  admitting  the  truth  of  our  Euclidean  geometry, 
will  enable  us  to  accept  at  the  same  time  many  other  pro- 
positions which  the  older  mathematics  would  not  counte- 
nance. Not  that  we  here  build  upon  what  appears  at  best  a 
remote  contingency ;  we  only  say  it  is  not  the  part  of  wisdom 
to  deny  such  possibilities.  If  anything  at  all  is  taught  by 
human  history,  it  is  that  impossibility  is  a  word  which  the 
prudent  will  seldom  use.  We  do  not  say  "  never,"  but,  "  as 
little  as  he  can."  Meanwhile,  certain  apparent  incompati- 
bilities remain,  and  we  are  far  from  denying  them  here.  But 
the  dialectic,  and  too  often  common  sense,  as  well  as  the 
inherited  instincts  of  man,  do  make  a  sweeping  claim  of  the 
opposite  tenor;  they  deny,  consciously  or  by  implication, 


470  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

that  sameness  is  consistent  with  difference.  And  we  declare 
that  for  this  extreme  utterance  there  is  no  justification  in 
heaven  or  earth. 

Our  whole  point  is  that  there  is  no  ground  for  saying  that 
sameness  gives  the  lie  to  difference,  or  conversely.  It  would, 
of  course,  not  be  enough  to  bring  up  fact  after  fact  where  the 
two  are  found  together.  The  empiricists  do  this,  and  be- 
lieve that  they  have  thereby  refuted  the  logician.  But  they 
have  not  met  him;  the  two  are  arguing  at  cross-purposes. 
The  logician  knows  as  well  as  anybody  else  what  the  facts 
are,  but  he  is  actuated  by  an  arriere  pensee  of  which  they  are 
unaware.  He  has  behind  him,  pushing  him  on,  this  dictum 
which  all  men,  even  the  empiricists,  actually  use  in  other 
fields,  viz.,  that  logically  sameness  and  difference  are  in- 
compatible; he  has  seen  deeper  than  they  do  in  this  regard. 
That  is  why  such  a  solution  as  that  of  James  (.4  Pluralistic 
Universe,  p.  68)  is  really  no  solution.  James  says  that  they, 
the  dialecticians,  take  the  entity  as  excluding  what  it  does 
not  expressly  include,  and  then  weave  in  an  inconsistency 
when  they  find  that  it  includes  that  same.  No  doubt  he  is 
correct;  that  is  exactly  what  they  do  do.  But  James  did 
not  see  that  they  had  every  motive  for  doing  so;  that  they 
but  followed  the  customary  procedure  of  mankind  when 
they  did  it;  a  procedure  which  every  philosopher  has 
adopted,  and  which  James  himself,  in  spite  of  the  best 
intentions,  also  adopted  when  he  objurgated  rationalism, 
absolutism,  and  the  whole  tribe  of  transcendentalists.  We 
have  said  motive,  but  not  ground.  Our  inquiry  has  led  us  to 
believe  that  at  bottom  the  whole  momentous  decision,  so 
potent  of  evil  in  human  history,  is  a  simple,  groundless  act 
of  choice;  caused,  if  you  are  a  determinist  and  wish  to 
insist,  but  caused  not  by  intellectual  or  practical  need,  but 
probably  by  some  mysterious  transfer  of  instinct  from  the 


THE  REMEDY  471 

physical  arena  of  the  struggle  for  existence  over  to  the  realm 
of  disinterested  investigation. 

The  last  stronghold  of  this  brute  postulate  lies  in  the  claim 
of  self -evidence.  "  Why  argue  about  the  matter,"  we  may 
be  addressed,  "  when  you  know  perfectly  well  that  different 
positions  never  can  be  one,  that  white  is  not  and  never  can 
be  sweet,  that  red  can  never  be  heavy,  that  you  cannot  be 
your  friend  ?  "  And  after  all,  who  would  think  of  denying 
these  distinctions  ?  Are  they  not  of  all  things  the  most 
patent  ?  How  then  can  we  say  they  hold  between  iden- 
tities ?  Surely  if  two  things  are  two  they  are  not  one,  and 
if  they  are  one  they  are  no  longer  two;  and  surely  identity 
means  oneness  and  difference  means  duality.  Now  there  is 
just  enough  of  obvious  truth  in  these  statements  to  cast 
upon  one  who  would  qualify  them  a  little,  the  suspicion  of 
absurdity.  White  is  not  sweet,  we  say;  but  what  is  evident 
here  is  that  white  is  other  than  sweet,  not  that  white  refuses 
to  be  identified  in  any  way  with  sweet.  "  White  "  has 
toward  "  sweet  "  a  certain  relation  which  we  call  "  other- 
ness ";  why  should  it  not  also  have  that  relation  we  call 
"  identity  "  ?  In  the  famous  lump  of  sugar  of  Mr.  Bradley, 
the  white  and  sweet  are  identified.  It  is  that  little  word 
"  not  "  which  contains  just  enough  of  ambiguity  to  mis- 
direct the  intelligence.  For  we  use  that  one  word  to  mean 
now  the  relation  of  otherness  between  terms,  now  the  denial 
of  a  suggested  judgment.  Had  the  peoples  who  gradually 
formed  the  English  language  been,  per  impossible,  exact 
logicians,  they  would  have  used  two  different  words  for 
these  distinct  meanings.  When  I  say,  Caesar  did  not  kill 
Brutus,  I  contradict  the  suggestion  that  he  did  so;  when  I 
say  red  is  not  blue,  I  may  mean  only  to  signify  the  duality 
of  these  two.  The  former  proposition  is  equivalent  to  "  it  is 
not  true  that  Caesar  killed  Brutus  ";  the  latter  proposition 


PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

need  not  be  meant  as  a  denial  of  anything,  but  rather  as  an 
affirmation  of  the  relation  otherness  or  duality.  Otherness  is 
a  very  different  concept  from  opposition  or  denial;  unfor- 
tunately the  negative  of  human  language  has  not  indicated 
the  difference.  No,  the  distinction  between  white  and  sweet 
may  be  eternally  valid,  but  it  is  not  obvious,  when  we  look 
carefully,  that  it  precludes  identity  between  them.  Nor  is  it 
obvious  that  the  distinction  between  my  friend  and  myself 
forbids  some  identity.  For  certain  purposes,  I  am  he;  as 
when  he  gives  me  his  proxy  and  I  cast  the  vote,  or  indeed 
when  I  represent  him  in  any  way.  The  objector  was  sup- 
posed just  now  to  say  that  if  two  things  are  two  they  are  not 
one.  Here  again  it  is  the  ambiguity  of  "  not "  that  is  to 
blame  for  the  opinion  that  the  alleged  exclusion  is  obvious. 
If  they  are  two,  their  relationship  is  so  far  other  than  the 
relationship  of  identity.  But  "  other  than "  does  not 
obviously  mean  "  opposed  to  ";  what  is  obvious  is  simply 
that  we  have  here  two  distinct  concepts.  So  it  is  not  ob- 
vious that  if  two  things  are  two,  any  identity  or  unity  of 
them  ought  to  be  denied.  They  can  be  both  two  and  one. 
Or  if  we  take  the  other  statement,  that  if  they  are  one,  they 
are  no  longer  two,  we  must  make  a  similar  reply.  Unity  is 
other  than  duality,  but  there  is  no  excuse  for  saying  that  it  is 
opposed  to  it  or  denies  it. 

In  spite  of  all  arguments,  however,  one  may  insist  that  to 
him  the  transition  from  other  than  to  opposed  to  is  an  obvious 
one.  We  can  not  directly  say  him  nay.  If  a  man  smells  a 
smell,  he  smells  it,  and  no  amount  of  assertion  on  our  part 
that  we  do  not  smell  it  will  refute  him.  How  shall  we  meet 
this  ultimate  insistence  ?  So  many  men  have  uttered  it  - 
practically  all  men,  explicitly  or  implicitly:  may  it  not  be  a 
sort  of  final  axiom  which  we  ourselves  lack  the  power  to 
grasp  ?  Here  then  would  be  a  hopeless  deadlock;  unless  we 


THE  REMEDY  473 

can  go  further  than  we  have  gone,  we  have  really  not  met 
his  claim.  We  have  only  contradicted  it  as  arbitrarily  as  he 
has  posited  it.  But  we  believe  that  it  is  possible  to  go 
further;  we  declare  that  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  such  a 
transition  could  not  be  self-evident.  It  is  essentially  a  nega- 
tive judgment  and  nothing  more.  It  says  "  it  is  self-evident 
that  difference  is  incompatible  with  identity  ";  and  incom- 
patibility is  at  bottom  naught  but  denial  pure  and  simple. 
Negative  judgments  however  must  have  some  positive  basis; 
but  there  is  no  such  basis  available.  The  only  such  basis 
could  be,  observation  of  some  quality,  given  in  experience, 
about  the  difference-relation  which  is  seen  then  and  there  to 
rule  out  identity.  Where  else  than  to  experience  have  we  to 
look  for  positive  grounds  for  our  negative  judgments  ?  Not 
to  thought,  certainly,  for  thought  is  the  very  agent  that  is 
seeking  a  positive  basis  for  its  own  utterance.  But  if  we 
look  to  experience,  we  find  the  very  opposite  of  what  we  are 
seeking.  We  find,  time  after  time,  instances  of  sameness- 
in-difference;  our  account  a  few  pages  back  enumerated 
some  of  them.  So  far  from  finding  positive  ground  for 
this  mysterious  negation  of  our  opponent's,  we  find  ground 
for  disallowing  it.  No  ground  is  forthcoming,  then,  for 
his  negation;  it  subsists  in  vacuo.  And  being  in  vacua, 
with  nothing  positive  about  it,  it  could  not  be  self-evident. 
No  mere  denial  can  be;  for  it  is  something  which  could 
not  appear  as  object  for  the  mind  to  gaze  at;  it  has  no 
content. 

If  we  have  so  far  proceeded  without  serious  error,  we  may 
then  make  bold  to  dismiss  the  whole  claim  of  the  dialectic. 
And  now  let  us  set  forth  the  true  significance  of  our  method. 
It  will,  we  believe,  reveal  to  us  a  principle  which  is  as 
beneficent  and  fruitful  of  results  as  the  germ  of  the  dialectic 
was  deadly. 


474  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Confining  the  discussion  still  to  the  more  abstract  sphere, 
we  say  that  any  two  things,  A  and  B,  may  be  identical  yet 
different.  Call  it  partly  identical  or  identical  in  some  aspect, 
and  partly  different,  or  different  in  some  other  aspect,  if 
you  please;  nothing  is  essentially  changed  by  such  wording. 
The  point  is  that  sameness  and  difference  may  cohabit  with- 
out shame.  Now  this  means  "  A  is  A  and  also  A  is  B  " ;  the 
truth  is  an  ultimate  one,  not  subject  to  criticism  as  being 
partial,  abstract,  inconsistent,  or  in  any  other  way  phil- 
osophically damnable.  But  since  both  these  propositions 
are  true,  must  we  always  implicitly  affirm  them  both  ?  Is 
it  not  ultimately  true  to  say  that  A  is  B,  if  we  say  nothing 
and  think  nothing  and  imply  nothing  about  the  other  pro- 
position ?  In  other  words,  do  these  two  form  an  organic 
unity,  such  that  each  implies  the  other  and  one  without  the 
other  is  meaningless,  or  are  they  just  two  principles  side  by 
side  and  independent  of  each  other  ?  If  the  former  is  the 
case,  we  have  an  ultimate  monism;  if  the  latter,  ultimate 
dualism. 

Notice  that  the  monistic  union  of  these  two  principles 
views  them  by  the  light  of  the  principle  of  internality ;  and 
that  the  dualistic  one  views  them  under  that  of  externality. 
The  monistic  view  says  that  each  axiom  implies  the  other, 
and  thereby  it  applies  one  of  the  axioms  to  both  of  them. 
The  dualistic  view  finds  each  axiom  independent  of  the 
other,  and  thus  applies  the  other  axiom  to  both  of  them. 
And  it  is  quite  proper  that  this  should  be  so;  for  if  these  two 
axioms  are  ultimate,  they  ought  to  apply  to  themselves  as 
well  as  to  everything  else.  Have  we  then  ultimate  monism 
or  ultimate  dualism  ?  Why,  we  have  both.  You  can  say, 
A  is  A  throughout  all  changes — the  principle  of  externality; 
you  can  stop  there,  and  need  not  appeal  to  the  other  axiom 
to  show  it;  the  statement  is  ultimate  quite  by  itself.  Or 


THE  REMEDY  475 

again  you  can  say,  A  is  B  —  the  principle  of  internality; 
and  this  need  not  be  supported  on  the  other  axiom,  for  it  is 
able  to  stand  alone.  Or,  finally,  you  can  say,  both  are  true, 
each  supplementing  the  other  and  bringing  a  new  and 
richer  meaning  to  that  other.  That  we  are  permitted  to  say 
either  one  we  please  of  the  first  two  is  the  truth  of  ultimate 
dualism;  that  we  are  equally  permitted  to  say  the  third,  is 
ultimate  monism.  In  short,  we  may  choose  freely  which 
principle  we  shall  serve,  but  we  must  make  the  choice  with 
the  understanding  that  the  other  choice  is  also  permitted. 
Indeed,  if  it  were  not  also  permitted,  there  would  be  no 
freedom ;  the  choice  being  once  made,  we  should  not  longer 
be  free  to  admit  the  counter-principle.  Phrasing  this  in 
objective  terms,  we  say:  reality  is  monistic,  and  it  is  du- 
alistic,  either  or  both;  any  single  object  or  thing  is  part  of  the 
great  system  of  the  whole,  or  it  is  independent,  or  it  is  both 
together.  But  since  duality  is  what  permits  the  alternation, 
the  deeper  trait  is  duality.  Duality  and  unity  are  not  of 
quite  equal  rank;  the  account  we  shall  give  of  the  universe 
will  describe  it  primarily  as  a  duality. 

If  reality  were  not  thus  freely  dual,  the  dialectic  could  not 
have  been  solved.  For  then,  the  choice  of  one  side  —  be  it 
ultimate  dualism,  or  ultimate  monism,  ultimate  independ- 
ence, or  ultimate  system  —  would  have  excluded  the  choice 
of  the  other;  to  accept  it  as  true  alone  and  for  itself  would 
be  to  accept  it  as  exclusive  of  that  other ;  it  would  be  as  is 
customary  in  human  affairs,  that  having  made  one  choice 
we  are  not  allowed  to  admit  the  justice  of  the  other.  But 
reality  lends  itself  impartially  to  either  interpretation; 
which  means  that  reality  itself  is  both.  This  may  also  be  put 
in  another  way.  Human  attention  is  selective;  we  fix  the 
eye  on  one  spot,  and  the  surroundings  pass  more  or  less  out 
of  the  visual  field.  But  we  do  not  thereby  deny  the  actuality 


476  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

of  what  is  beyond  the  fringe  of  vision.  We  ignore  it,  we 
exclude  it  from  our  sight,  but  there  is  objectively  no  exclu- 
sion. Here  is  a  matter  whose  importance,  so  far  as  we  know, 
philosophers  have  never  recognized.  They  are  wont  to 
justify  their  exclusive  partisanships  by  referring  to  the 
narrowness  of  the  field  of  attention;  but  they  altogether 
overlook  the  fact  that  this  narrowness  is  not  at  all  of  a 
denying  sort,  but  is  just  an  ignoring.  To  ignore  is  far  from 
denying.  The  denier  does  not  at  all  ignore;  the  ignorer 
does  not  at  all  deny.  Now  reality  is  exactly  so  constituted. 
Its  parts  or  elements  ignore  one  another,  or  they  consult 
one  another;  in  consulting  one  another,  they  ignore  the 
attitude  of  ignoring,  and  vice  versa.  As  human  beings  are 
free  to  attend  now  to  this  limited  field,  now  to  that,  and  get 
indubitable  truth  when  they  do  so,  so  reality  itself  contains 
parts  which  display  a  like  freedom ;  they  are  independent  of 
one  another,  and  they  are  "  interpenetrated,"  and  these 
properties  of  independence  and  interpenetration  are  again 
independent  and  interpenetrative,  and  so  on.  The  principle 
by  which  we  have  rid  ourselves  of  exclusion  is  not  an  exclu- 
sive inclusion,  but  a  free  inclusion.  Herein  our  remedy  dif- 
fers, so  far  as  we  know,  toto  caelo  from  any  remedy  that  has 
hitherto  been  proposed,  either  by  partisan  or  synthetist; 
yet  it  includes  the  remedies  alike  of  both,  though  freely. 
In  following  this  method  of  free  choice,  it  makes  dualism 
absolute;  for  reality,  permitting  such  a  choice,  thereby 
writes  itself  down  as  fundamentally  dualistic.  But  again, 
dualism  itself  would  not  be  dualism  if  it  were  dualism  alone; 
for  then  it  would  be  single  and  exclusive.  It  also  permits 
monism,  but  once  more  in  no  exclusive  manner. 

This  is  the  abstract  and  formal  account  of  our  proposed 
solution;  it  remains  to  apply  it  to  the  various  antinomies. 
And  in  that  lies  the  test  of  its  validity;  for  however  sound 


THE  REMEDY  477 

it  might  happen  to  seem  in  abstracto,  it  must  show  that 
soundness  also  by  its  bearing  upon  the  concrete  issues.  Here, 
too,  both  of  the  ultimate  principles  should  apply.  If  the 
solution  is  valid  by  itself,  it  ought  to  be  valid  as  well  in  its 
relation  to  the  particular  antagonisms  which  have  developed 
in  human  thought  and  practice. 

Let  us  then  see  how  the  principle  of  the  duality  of  reality 
solves  the  chief  antinomies.  It  is  natural  to  begin  with  the 
simpler,  i.  e.,  the  theoretical  ones. 

Zeno's  famous  old  arrow-tip  is  at  rest  in  each  point  of  its 
flight;  and  notwithstanding  the  definition  of  rest  as  in- 
volving duration,  we  might  as  well  call  this  rest,  since  it  is 
quite  other  than  motion.  The  tip  is  where  it  is,  and  none 
should  deny  that  it  is  in  a  particular  point  of  space  at  a 
particular  point  of  time;  for  these  points  to  which  analysis 
leads  are  quite  real.  But  the  rest  is  not  exclusive  of  motion; 
which  appears  as  follows.  It  is  the  nature  of  time  that  the 
present  no  sooner  is  than  it  becomes  something  new.  In 
the  very  act  of  occurring,  the  present  shows  a  little  bit  of 
futurity;  it  is  transeunt.  Transeuncy  simply  means  that 
the  future  is  here,  to  however  small  an  extent,  with  the  pres- 
ent. How,  then,  do  you  ask,  is  that  bit  of  the  future  which 
the  present  has  got  between  its  teeth  (to  use  a  Bergsonian 
metaphor)  distinguished  from  the  instantaneous  present,  if 
both  are  equally  here  now  ?  Simply  by  the  fact  that  the 
instantaneous  present  also  takes  on  the  mysterious  quality 
which  we  call  pastness;  while  the  bit  of  futurity  does  not. 
The  tip  of  the  arrow  is  at  the  present  moment  here  and  at 
another  very  near  moment  a  little  further  on;  but  this 
occurrence  is  one  integral  existential  thing.  But  the  second 
moment  is  already  present  with  the  first  moment;  such  is 
the  continuity  and  the  transeuncy  of  time.  We  do  not  then 
say  that  the  tip  is  in  two  different  places  at  one  instant,  but 


478  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

that  it  is  in  two  different  places  at  two  different  instants 
which  in  spite  of  their  difference  are  both  present.  They  are 
present,  however,  hi  different  ways,  for  the  later  moment, 
which  we  have  called  a  bit  of  futurity,  has  itself  a  transeunt 
quality  similar  to  that  of  its  predecessor,  while  its  predeces- 
sor has  that  fading  quality  which  we  call  disappearance  or 
pastness.  All  this  is  simply  our  psychological  "  specious  " 
present,  as  James  called  it,  objectified.  Time  is,  indeed, 
just  the  sort  of  thing  we  immediately  feel  it  to  be.  It  con- 
tains instants  and  is  punctual;  but  it  is  also  much  more, 
for  the  points  are  not  cut  off  or  discrete.  They  are  identi- 
cally present  but  with  different  relations;  the  one  being 
productive  of  something  not  included  in  the  present  (this 
is  the  later  moment)  the  other  being  not  productive  (this 
is  the  earlier  which  has  the  fading  quality).  And  the  tip  of 
the  arrow  is  at  the  present  instant  just  where  it  is,  and  at  a 
later  but  equally  present  instant  somewhere  else.  As 
purple  is  at  once  both  red  and  blue,  the  present  position  of 
the  tip  is  in  both  of  these  positions  at  one  present  time;  but 
that  time  is  a  dual  affair. 

In  this  solution  we  have  been  just  to  our  experience;  for 
experience  offers  exactly  that  union  of  instant  with  instant 
which  we  have  emphasized.  At  the  same  time  we  have  not 
—  as  empiricists  in  this  matter  usually  do  —  denied  the 
reality  of  that  product  of  analysis,  the  punctual  element. 
But  we  have  included  both  the  internal  and  the  external 
principles;  the  particular  instant  and  position  of  the  arrow's 
tip  is  admitted  real,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  is  admitted 
the  transition  to  another  position.  This  admission  of  both 
is  rendered  possible  only  by  our  general  solution:  that  A 
may  be  B  while  yet  it  is  A ,  sameness  being  not  exclusive  of 
or  excluded  by  difference.  The  present  moment  may  in- 
clude a  certain  future  moment,  while  not  ceasing  to  be  pres- 


THE  REMEDY  479 

ent.  How  much  of  the  future  it  includes  is  an  empirical 
matter  —  and  actually  we  find  that  it  includes  very  little. 
And  of  course  we  have  not  pretended  herein  to  give  a  full 
definition  of  time. 

Next,  take  the  antinomy  of  time's  beginning.  There  can 
be  a  first  moment  of  time ;  for  instance,  such  a  dual  moment 
as  we  have  described  above.  We  were  able  to  describe  that 
moment  without  in  the  least  presupposing  an  earlier  one. 
Herein  the  externality-principle  is  respected.  But  the 
internality-principle  need  not  be  denied ;  for  there  may  be  an 
infinite  number  of  preceding  moments  also.  But  does  this 
not  contradict  the  statement  that  the  said  moment  was  the 
beginning  ?  No,  for  beginning  connotes  an  event  such  that 
before  it  there  was  nothing  other  than  itself:  that  event 
always  was.  To  say  a  thing  always  was,  up  to  a  certain 
point  of  tune,  and  then  was  succeeded  by  something  else, 
is  to  say  that  tune  began  at  that  point.  It  is  also  to  grant 
that  there  is  infinite  past  tune  preceding  it;  for  if  you  insist 
that  every  moment  of  time  is  relative  to  a  preceding  moment 
your  insistence  is  rewarded  by  the  admission  that  the  event 
in  question  may  be  dated  with  reference  to  the  moment 
before  it  began  to  change,  and  that  latter  moment  again 
with  reference  to  a  preceding  moment,  and  so  on  without 
end.  But  since  that  event  continues  unchanged  through 
all  these  retrogressing  moments,  this  infinite  series  is  not  one 
which  could  never  all  have  transpired.  For  the  event  was 
eternally  accomplished ;  it  did  not  have  to  wait  through  an 
eternity  before  it  could  happen;  the  objection  to  the  end- 
lessness of  past  time  vanishes.  As  long  as  we  grant  that  one 
and  the  same  event  can  be  occurring  at  continuously  suc~ 
ceeding  moments,  there  is  no  difficulty  about  the  endless 
series.  But  this  admission  is  nothing  but  our  principle  of 
sameness-in-difference.  A  past  moment  of  time  may  con- 


480  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

tain  the  same  individual  event  as  the  present  moment  con- 
tains. To  deny  this  is  the  arbitrary  exclusion  perpetrated 
by  the  Bergsonian  and  other  such  theories. 

We  pass  to  the  "  completed  infinite."  Already  this 
antinomy  has  been  solved  in  regard  to  the  thing-quality 
category,  and  predication;  we  have  now  to  apply  the  solu- 
tion to  the  case  of  the  finite  line  and  its  infinite  points. 
The  line  contains  all  the  points.  As  we  analyze  (divide)  the 
line  we  find  ever  new  points  not  before  discovered.  But 
these  new  points  were  really  there  all  the  time,  ere  we  dis- 
covered them.  Every  new  point  is  but  the  same  old 
material,  the  content  of  the  line,  which  we  had  at  the 
beginning.  The  endlessness  of  the  collection  of  points  then 
does  not  signify  that  the  line  is  never  completed ;  for  what- 
ever new  entities  the  series  of  points  includes  are  the  same 
as  the  content  of  the  original  line.  Since  every  new  element 
is  the  same  old  material,  the  series  is  always  completed; 
since  on  the  other  hand  it  is  a  new  instance  of  that  material, 
different  in  position  from  the  other  instances,  the  series 
always  can  be  extended.  It  is  just  because  the  points  help 
to  constitute  the  line  that  they  offer  the  spectacle  of  iden- 
tity pervading  an  endless  series  of  differences.  And  it  is 
because  sameness  and  difference  are  non-contradictory  and 
complementary  aspects  that  this  spectacle  contains  no 
antinomy. 

The  completed  infinite  in  time  looks  tougher,  because  the 
collection  of  instants  in  a  duration,  say,  of  one  minute,  is 
not  "  all  there  "  at  once.  The  new  instants,  as  they  come 
on  the  scene  in  succession,  are  not  the  same  old  material  that 
was  there  at  the  beginning.  So  at  least  it  appears  at  first. 
But  recall  what  we  have  said  about  the  extension  of  the  pres- 
ent moment.  It  contains  at  least  two  instants;  and  these 
are  separated  by  a  finite  interval  of  duration,  however 


THE  REMEDY  481 

small.  It  could  not  be  otherwise,  because  there  are  no  two 
points  next  each  other.  Now  such  an  interval,  given  all  at 
once  as  it  is,  is  exactly  comparable  to  the  line  in  space.  All 
the  instants  which  must  have  transpired  —  and  they  are 
infinite  —  are  present  together,  "  all  there  "  so  that  each 
new  point  discovered  by  analysis  is  but  the  same  old 
material  as  the  original  present  moment.  There  is  then  no 
contradiction  in  this  elementary  present  moment.  As  to  the 
minute  of  duration,  that  is  a  finite  sum  of  these  finite  parts 
and  can  therefore  offer  no  pretense  of  an  antinomy. 

We  come  now  to  the  most  difficult  of  the  theoretical  list, 
viz.,  that  apparently  hard  and  fast  opposition  between 
freedom  and  determination.  The  axiom  of  internality  says 
that  every  event  is  dependent  upon  all  the  rest  of  the  uni- 
verse —  and  in  particular  upon  its  antecedents.  As  the 
rest  of  the  universe  is  fixed,  being  just  what  it  is  and  was,  so 
then  the  event  in  question  is  fixed;  it  could  not  be  other 
than  what  it  is.  On  the  other  hand  the  axiom  of  exter- 
nality forces  us  to  believe  that  the  event  is  a  reality  for 
itself,  independent  of  others.  Since  independence  means 
indifference,  the  event  is  indifferent  to  those  others.  If 
they  had  been  otherwise,  it  might  have  been  the  same,  and 
they  being  what  they  are,  it  might  have  been  otherwise. 
Could  there  be  a  flatter  contradiction  than  there  is  between 
these  two  ?  Either  the  event  is  determined,  or  it  is  not 
determined  —  but  since  determination  is  not  merely  other 
than  indifference  but  the  very  opposite  of  it,  it  certainly 
seems  as  if  these  two  could  not  be  reconciled.  We  have 
already  estimated  the  specious  reconciliation  of  Kant  and 
many  others,  which  relegates  the  antagonists  to  diverse 
aspects.  We  might  in  any  case  know  from  our  discussion 
of  the  "  aspect-device  "  as  a  solvent  of  contradiction,  that 
the  procedure  of  Kant  could  not  succeed.  But  can  we  do 
any  better  ? 


482  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Take  the  case  of  a  heavy  ball  of  lead  falling  at  sea  level  in 
a  vacuum  from  the  height  of  32.08  feet  to  the  ground.  It 
should  fall,  by  the  law  of  gravitation,  in  exactly  one  second. 
We  find  by  careful  measurement  that  it  falls  in  1.0002 
seconds.  We  say  that  this  apparently  accidental  variation 
from  strict  rule  is  not  free,  but  is  determined  by  the  sur- 
roundings, e.  g.,  by  the  fact  that  the  vacuum  is  not  perfect. 
Calculating  the  retardation  due  to  the  presence  of  a  small 
quantity  of  air,  we  find  that  the  ball  should  have  fallen  in 
1.00019  seconds.  This  apparently  accidental  deviation, 
however,  we  ascribe  to  a  slight  upward  component  due  to 
the  attraction,  say,  of  the  moon  upon  the  leaden  ball.  Cal- 
culating now  the  actual  effect  of  this  attraction,  we  find  that 
the  ball  should  have  fallen  in  1.000201  seconds.  This  slight 
discrepancy,  again,  we  explain  away  by  some  other  cause, 
and  so  on  indefinitely. 

At  every  stage  of  the  explaining  process,  we  find  that  the 
phenomenon  is  for  the  most  part  determined,  while  there 
is  a  relatively  small  residuum  which  has  not  been  accounted 
for.  This  residuum,  we  say,  is  due  to  the  action  of  some 
remote  cause  which  has  been  reduced  indeed  to  a  minimum, 
but  has  not  been  wholly  removed.  But  as  fast  as  this  mini- 
mum is  discounted,  we  find  another  minimal  discrepancy 
within  it  which  has  not  been  accounted  for.  Now  each  of 
these  slight  discrepancies  is  due  to  the  influence  of  some  fact 
independent  of  the  main  phenomenon  which  is  being  investi- 
gated. The  resistance  of  the  air,  the  attraction  of  the  moon, 
etc.,  are  causes  which  do  not  depend  upon  the  gravitation  of 
the  lead  toward  the  earth.  The  air  is  a  different  body  from 
the  earth,  the  moon  is  distinct  from  earth  and  air,  and  so  on ; 
and  each  of  these  bodies  exercises  its  effect  by  itself  —  an 
effect  which  cannot  be  wholly  reduced  to  terms  of  the  earth's 
gravitation.  However  interdependent  these  various  agents 


THE  REMEDY  483 

may  be,  they  are  ultimately  separate  things,  and  as  plural- 
ism has  once  for  all  shown  (Chapter  XI),  they  cannot  be 
reduced  to  one  bare  identity  and  nothing  more. 

Any  one  single  event,  however  simple  it  appears,  is  indefi- 
nitely composite;  compounded  out  of  an  indefinitely  great 
number  of  causes.  The  variation  of  that  event  from  exact 
obedience  to  law  is  only  the  expression  of  the  presence  of 
these  many  causes.  In  so  far  as  these  causes  are  irreducible 
to  one  another,  they  are  independent  entities;  and  in  so  far 
they  are  relatively  to  one  another  free.  The  variation  of  the 
event  from  exact  law  is  therefore  in  the  last  analysis,  free 
variation;  only  this  does  not  mean  that  the  said  event  is 
itself  so  far  undetermined.  Given  the  existence  of  the  many 
causes  which  produce  it,  itself  is  quite  determined;  but 
though  it  does  the  will  of  those  causes  implicitly,  yet  it  is,  so 
to  speak,  carrying  out  their  free  behests. 

And  the  same  is  true  of  the  event  itself.  The  ball  of  lead 
is  an  ultimate  fact,  independent  of  the  pull  of  the  moon,  the 
air,  the  earth's  attraction.  It  is  an  element  upon  which  all 
of  these  react;  an  end- term  to  which  they  assume  certain 
relations.  Its  own  way  of  reacting  to  their  influence  is  eter- 
nally its  own;  its  own  behaviour  is  characteristic  of  it,  and 
when  fully  recorded,  serves  to  differentiate  it  from  all  other 
bodies.  Herein  lies  a  freedom  peculiar  to  itself.  If  the 
metaphor  may  be  permitted,  it  must  respond  to  the  call  of 
these  agents,  but  it  will  respond  in  its  own  way;  even  as  one 
man  will  respond  to  a  sermon  or  a  lecture  in  a  very  different 
way  from  that  of  another  man.  It  feels  the  resistance  of  the 
air  less  than  a  feather,  it  is  not  as  elastic  as  glass,  etc.,  etc. 
And  in  all  this  we  are  not  exhibiting  empty  formalities 
such  as  the  lead  as  a  thing-in-itself  versus  the  lead  as  a 
phenomenon,  or  as  a  unique  individual  versus  a  congeries  of 
universals,  etc. ;  but  verifiable  traits  of  concrete  behaviour. 


484  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

But  this  is  only  a  superficial  reconciliation.  Have  we  any- 
thing but  determinism  in  such  an  account  ?  The  ball  of 
lead  once  given,  cannot  change  its  way  of  reacting;  the 
moon  cannot  help  pulling  on  it,  the  air  must  resist  just  as  it 
does,  etc.  It  seems  quite  barren  to  call  these  actions  and 
reactions  free  when  we  know  they  cannot  be  otherwise. 
There  are  no  genuine  alternatives  of  behaviour  before  these 
things.  But  let  us  look  more  closely. 

When  an  experiment  like  this  one  of  the  falling  ball  is 
repeated  again  and  again,  the  results  are  fou^d  to  vary. 
Perhaps  never  do  we  get  the  same  results  twice  alike.  To 
be  sure,  the  degree  of  such  variation  is  relatively  small.  The 
resistance  of  the  air  varies  ever  so  little,  from  moment  to 
moment;  but  we  keep  it  as  nearly  constant  as  we  can.  The 
attraction  of  the  moon  may  in  itself  even  vary  enormously 
in  direction  —  but  it  is  a  remote  cause,  so  small,  we  say,  as 
to  be  negligible.  Indeed,  the  very  nature  of  a  scientific 
experiment  is  that  all  the  causes  but  one  (or  a  very  few)  are 
reduced  to  a  minimum.  Consequently,  while  the  experi- 
ment gives  varying  results,  those  results  vary  always  within 
certain  rather  narrow  limits.  The  leaden  ball,  let  fall 
repeatedly,  will  fall  in,  say,  1.0002  seconds  the  first  time, 
1.00018  the  second,  1.000209  the  third,  and  so  forth.  In 
other  words,  the  "  uniformity  of  nature  "  is  but  approxi- 
mately verified.  The  divergence  from  law  never  passes 
beyond  a  certain  range  of  variation;  how  narrow  the  range 
is,  depends  upon  the  accuracy  of  the  experiment. 

These  variations  are,  it  would  seem,  due  to  the  changing 
conditions  which  surround  the  experiment.  They  are  not 
to  be  construed  as  the  realization  of  alternative  possibilities 
one  after  another ;  everything  is  so  far  in  accord  with  deter- 
minism. But  there  is  another  fact  which,  so  far  as  we  know, 
seems  not  yet  to  have  been  noticed  by  philosophers.  It  is 


THE  REMEDY  485 

a  very  well-known  fact,  but  it  seems  not  to  have  attracted 
the  philosophic  mind.  We  refer  to  a  certain  character  of 
these  variations  from  exact  law.  They  are,  to  a  surface 
view,  merely  irregular.  But  when  carefully  measured, 
tabulated,  plotted  in  a  graph,  they  show  a  remarkable  prop- 
erty. The  graph  is  that  of  the  probability-curve.  And  this 
is  a  phenomenon  of  wide  generality;  for  it  is  true  that 
almost  all  the  events  of  Nature  show  it.  Repeated  shots  at 
a  target,  repeated  measurements  of  a  rod,  repeated  almost 
anything,  &>  the  science  of  statistics  has  shown,  give  a 
figure  which  is  some  form  or  other  —  skew  or  symmetrical 
—  of  this  same  curve. 

The  significance  of  such  a  fact  we  believe  to  be  this.  The 
probability-curve  is  what  we  get  when  we  graphically  plot 
the  values  of  a  series  of  resultants  which  are  compounded 
out  of  many  causes  —  where  all  possible  combinations  of 
those  causes  occur  in  approximately  equal  numbers.  This 
condition  of  the  equal  frequency  of  all  possible  combinations 
is  essential  to  the  curve.  Is  it  not  a  curious  trait  ?  Why  on 
earth  should  there  be  such  a  peculiar  property  ?  We  do  not 
know  how  to  account  for  it.  Why,  when  a  given  event  is 
tried  again  and  again,  should  the  results  vary  so  as  to  cover 
all  possible  cases  ?  Why  does  a  man  shooting  at  a  small 
target  hit  every  part  of  the  target  if  he  shoots  long  enough  ? 
Why  do  we  feel  sure  that  if  a  vast  number  of  letters  were 
jumbled  together,  time  after  time,  eventually  we  should  get 
any  designable  combination,  say  the  play  of  Hamlet  ? 
Somehow  we  take  for  granted  this  tendency  to  vary  it;  it 
seems  a  priori,  inevitable.  But  it  is  not  so.  There  is  no  a 
priori  reason  why  the  continual  repetition  of  anything 
should  cover  all  possible  cases.  It  is  a  priori  quite  con- 
ceivable that  it  might  show  no  variation.  Do  you  say  that 
the  second  repetition  must  be  different  from  the  first,  be- 


486  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

cause  the  conditions  are  found  to  be  different  ?  No  doubt, 
we  reply:  no  doubt  they  are  bound  to  be  different  in  each 
repetition.  But  that  does  not  guarantee  the  equal  frequency 
of  all  possible  variations.  Certain  ones  might  greatly  pre- 
dominate over  others:  there  is  nothing  in  the  notion  of  per- 
petual difference  to  forbid  it.  No,  we  seem  to  have  here  a 
sort  of  ultimate  attribute  of  reality;  the  tendency  to  spread, 
to  cover  all  the  cases  not  ruled  out  by  the  circumstances.  It 
reminds  us  of  the  water  issuing  from  the  garden  hose,  whose 
general  current  running  in  one  direction  may  be  likened  to  a 
law,  and  whose  spraying,  spreading  quality,  increasing  as 
the  water  proceeds  outward,  is  analogous  to  the  variations 
here  emphasized. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  this  impartiality  of  Nature,  giving 
equal  opportunity  to  all  possible  combinations  of  events,  is 
a  beautiful  illustration  of  that  free  union  of  freedom  and 
determination  which  we  are  seeking  to  elucidate.  First,  as 
to  freedom.  Freedom  means  impartiality;  a  free  choice 
would  have  no  intrinsic  preference  for  one  alternative  over 
another.  If  such  a  preference  were  shown  time  after  time, 
we  must  conclude  that  there  was  no  freedom,  but  a  ground 
for  the  choice.  Where  there  is  no  preponderance,  there  is 
no  reason  for  thinking  the  choices  adopted  to  be  due  to 
anything.  That,  indeed,  is  the  very  definition  of  indif- 
ference. An  event  A  is  said  to  be  indifferent  to  another  B 
when  A  happens  equally  often  in  the  absence  or  the  presence 
of  B,  and  conversely.  Now  just  such  is  the  case  with  so 
many  of  the  events  in  Nature.  A  single  event  X  is  the  com- 
pound result  of  an  indefinitely  great  number  of  causes 
Xi,  Xt,  X3,  ...  As  the  event  is  repeated,  the  same  causes 
on  the  whole  reappear,  but  now  one  cause,  now  another, 
predominates,  changing  the  value  of  X  now  in  this  direction 
now  in  that,  until  all  the  possible  values  are  (approximately) 


THE  REMEDY  487 

equally  realized.  These  causes  thereby  show  their  indif- 
ference to  one  another.  In  the  case  of  the  falling  ball,  the 
variation  of  the  air's  resistance  is  largely  indifferent  to  the 
pull  of  the  moon;  the  changes  in  one  are  so  far  not  corre- 
lated with  changes  in  the  other.  And  this  fact,  that  these 
two  are  independent,  is  simply  a  consequence  of  the  fact 
that  the  air  has  its  own  character,  external  to  that  of  the 
moon,  and  vice  versa.  The  independence  between  the  varia- 
tions of  the  respective  agents  Xi,  X^  X*,  etc.,  of  event  X  is 
the  result  of  the  externality  of  these  agents  to  one  another; 
just  that  quality  which  we  dwelt  upon  a  little  above.  Speak- 
ing in  general  terms,  we  may  say  that  the  whole  world  is  the 
combination  of  a  vast  number  of  independent  causal  series; 
independent  because  made  up,  respectively,  of  the  behaviour 
of  things  which  are  logically  external  to  one  another. 
The  behaviour  of  no  one  of  these  agents  can  be  logi- 
cally deduced  from  that  of  any  other;  no,  not  even  if  we 
had  perfect  knowledge  of  all  that  that  other  has  done  or  will 
do.  The  freedom  really  lies  in  the  individual  way  of  acting 
and  reacting  which  each  entity  in  the  universe  displays. 
And  this  shows  how  we  can  say  there  are  genuine  possi- 
bilities, alternatives  of  behaviour  not  realized  at  a  given 
time  and  place.  The  "  nature  "  of  any  one  entity  —  say 
the  moon's  pull,  or  the  density  of  the  lead,  is  not  deter- 
minable  from  anything  else  but  just  itself.  It  might  have 
shown,  in  any  given  case,  a  different  reaction  from  the  one 
it  does  show.  Oh  no!  we  may  be  told:  lead  could  not  rise 
like  hydrogen.  Why  not  ?  we  ask.  There  is  no  way  of 
answering  this  question  without  a  vicious  circle.  If  it  rose 
like  hydrogen  it  would  not  be  lead,  true  —  but  why  should 
it  be  lead  ?  Why  should  lead  act  as  lead  does  ?  Perhaps 
because  certain  chemical  agencies  have  combined  in  a  cer- 
tain way  to  produce  this  leaden  ball;  but  then  the  question 


488  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

is  only  shoved  back.  Those  agencies  acted  as  they  did  for 
no  reason  except  their  inherent  "  nature."  Or  if  we  go  back 
further  and  find  the  compulsion  in  the  behaviour  of  electrons, 
then  we  but  find  those  electrons  displaying  their  own 
"  natures." 

Nevertheless,  this  "  nature  "  of  lead,  this  ultimate  fact 
that  in  a  given  situation  it  reacts  as  it  does,  once  discovered, 
permits  the  inference  that,  if  that  situation  is  exactly  re- 
peated, the  lead  must  react  always  in  the  same  way.  But 
it  is  never  in  exactly  the  same  situation,  presumably,  as 
before.  That  means  that  at  a  given  moment  it  is  acted  upon 
by  a  new  combination  of  causes.  How  will  it  react  to  this 
new  combination  ?  In  so  far  as  the  combination  resembles 
the  former  one,  the  reaction  of  the  lead  will  be  the  same. 
But  if  the  new  were  entirely  different  from  the  old,  we  could 
not  predict  beforehand  what  the  lead  would  do.  So  to  say, 
the  lead  itself  could  not  predict  what  it  would  do;  for  its 
"  nature  "  shows,  by  the  principle  of  internal  relations,  a 
different  side  for  every  new  environment.  Now  in  all  ex- 
periments conducted  by  man,  as  they  are  repeated  the  con- 
ditions are  very  nearly  the  same.  Accordingly,  we  may  be 
sure  that  the  reaction  of  the  body  experimented  upon  will 
be  very  nearly  the  same.  In  so  far  as  the  conditions  differ 
more  and  more  will  the  reaction  differ  more  and  more,  and 
since  the  nature  of  the  body  is  not  known  until  all  its  intrin- 
sic ways  of  reacting  are  known,  we  should  be  able  to  predict 
less  and  less  as  to  what  would  happen.  A  perfect  knowl- 
edge of  everything  that  had  happened  in  the  past  would 
not  enable  one  to  make  such  a  prediction.  The  "  nature  " 
of  the  reagent  is  not  something  preexisting,  determining  the 
reaction;  it  is  the  reaction  itself.  There  is  real  indeter- 
mination  here.  In  the  actual  situations  of  our  life,  the 
fundamental  changes  are  relatively  slight,  and  so  we  can 


THE  REMEDY  489 

predict  what  will  happen  within  very  narrow  limits.  We 
know  that  certain  things  are,  in  the  conditions  given, 
practically  ruled  out.  Lead  cannot  rise  suddenly,  etc.,  etc., 
—  that  we  know,  because  we  have  seen  lead  acting  in  the 
presence  of  the  earth's  gravitation.  But  if  we  were  suddenly 
thrown  into  a  universe  where  different  chemicals  existed, 
no  gravitation,  no  electricity,  etc.,  then  there  would  be  no 
way  of  telling  what  might  happen.  There  is  in  short  real 
chance;  but  where  the  conditions  remain  so  largely  uniform 
there  is  very  little  occasion  for  it  to  show  itself. 

But  all  this  is  at  the  same  time  determination,  simply 
because  all  that  happens  is  subject  to  the  law  that  the  same 
conditions  give  the  same  results.  A  thing  never  acts  con- 
trary to  its  habits :  the  leaden  ball  can  be  counted  upon  to 
behave  practically  as  it  always  has  behaved,  because  the 
conditions  are  practically  what  they  always  were.  And  each 
way  of  reacting  to  each  new  situation,  constituting  as  it 
does  the  character  of  the  reagent,  expresses  the  law  of  that 
reagent's  nature. 

This  combination  of  freedom  and  determinism  verifies 
our  principle  of  duality.  One  and  the  same  reaction  of  a 
given  body  to  a  given  force  acting  upon  it  may  be  regarded 
as  free,  or  determined,  or  both.  In  so  far  as  the  reaction  is 
identically  the  nature  of  the  body,  it  is  free.  In  so  far  as  the 
reaction  is  only  an  individual  event,  while  the  "  nature  " 
of  the  body  is  a  permanent  character,  the  reaction  is  deter- 
mined. These  two,  the  individual  event  and  the  "  nature  " 
of  the  body,  are  the  same  yet  distinct;  and  it  is  that 
sameness-in-difference  which  allows  each  aspect  of  the 
matter,  the  freedom  and  the  determination,  to  be  ulti- 
mately true. 

Of  the  freedom  of  the  human  will,  which  is  a  special  case 
of  the  above,  we  do  not  now  propose  to  treat.  The  nature 


490  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

of  will  and  choice  is  not  very  well  understood ;  the  experience 
of  activity  is  a  topic  beset  with  disagreements.  The  reac- 
tion of  a  particular  man  to  the  motives  which  urge  him  is  no 
doubt  free:  but  just  how  it  occurs,  how  it  bears  upon  his 
character,  whether  a  good  character  has  more  or  less  free- 
dom than  a  bad  one  —  all  such  questions  are  empirical  ones 
which,  however  interesting  and  profitable,  we  must  here 
dismiss.  We  must  for  the  present  concentrate  our  attention 
upon  the  application  of  our  principle  to  the  cure  of  the 
ancient  philosophic  malady. 

It  remains  to  show  the  solution  which  our  principle 
affords,  of  the  practical  antinomies.  In  general,  that  solu- 
tion must  be  in  accord  with  the  maxim  "  live  and  let  live." 
And  if  we  men  had  each  of  us  infinite  time  or  energy  at  our 
disposal,  it  would  be  enough  to  say  this.  We  could  put 
tremendous  energy  into  self-cultivation,  by  education,  re- 
flection, and  other  self-regarding  processes,  and  still  have 
plenty  left  to  devote  to  the  problems  of  politics,  economics, 
and  other  social  concerns.  But  with  our  short  lives  and 
limited  strength  we  must  find  a  way  of  combining  these 
opposites.  We  must  seek  a  mode  of  life  which  will  so  far  as 
possible  conduce  at  one  stroke  to  the  interests  of  both.  To 
a  certain  extent,  it  is  true,  we  must  allow  the  separation  of 
private  and  public  interests.  There  must  be  times  when  we 
play,  or  seek  our  own  profit  and  self -discipline  forgetful  of 
our  membership  in  the  social  body,  and  there  must  be  cer- 
tain other  moments  when  we  deliberately  disregard  our  own 
interests  for  the  sake  of  the  community.  Still,  with  the 
limitation  of  man's  powers  what  it  is,  these  self-seeking 
moments  must  be  fewer  than  the  moments  when  we  are 
trying  to  harmonize  egoism  and  altruism.  Our  work  should 
occupy  a  much  larger  space  of  life  than  our  play;  our  d#ily 
labour  in  the  community  than  our  pleasant  fancies  or  our 


THE  REMEDY  491 

bitter  sacrifices.  Now  the  solution  of  the  problem,  how  best 
to  make  egotism  and  altruism  interpenetrating  and  mutually 
contributory,  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  principle  we  have 
been  elucidating,  but  in  its  counterpart  principle.  For, 
once  more,  true  to  our  fundamental  dualistic  attitude,  we 
find  that  the  principle  of  duality  is  by  itself  insufficient. 
True,  valuable,  indispensable  as  it  is,  it  is  not  enough  to  give 
us  a  positive  system  of  reality  or  an  articulate  plan  of  life. 
It  requires  supplementation.  Or  it  would  be  better  to  say 
that  the  form  of  that  principle  which  we  have  already  an- 
nounced, should  be  supplemented  by  a  second  form;  since 
these  two  bases  of  reality  are  really  but  two  sides  of  one 
principle. 

The  solution  of  standing  contradictions  by  a  sort  of  pas- 
sivity, a  meek  acceptance  of  both  sides,  of  all  doctrines  as 
equally  true,  is  all  very  well;  but  it  gives  no  account  of  the 
way  in  which  the  universe  is  put  together;  no  positive  idea 
for  which  we  can  do  battle  with  single-eyed  devotion.  Such 
a  non-resisting  attitude  is  weakening  to  the  intellect  un- 
less it  goes  hand  in  hand  with  some  positive  principle, 
some  definite  platform  on  which  we  take  our  stand  as 
propagandists. 

When  we  diagnosed  the  philosophic  disease  we  found  that 
philosophy  was  barren  because  it  was  exclusive.  If  then  we 
have  removed  the  exclusiveness,  we  should  thereby  cure  the 
barrenness.  That  same  principle  which  solves  the  antino- 
mies and  removes  the  exclusiveness,  ought  to  render  human 
thought  fertile  to  explain  the  concrete  detail  of  reality.  The 
principle,  in  other  words,  should  enable  us  to  understand 
how  one  fact  or  aspect  of  the  universe  implies  others.  If, 
as  Mr.  Bradley  says,  "  thought  demands  to  go  with  a 
ground  and  a  reason,"  we  ought  now  to  have  the  means  of 
satisfying  that  demand.  The  principle  which  above  we 


492  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

called  the  duality  of  reality  thus  will  appear  as  a  productive 
principle,  or  better,  since  it  shows  how  one  thing  gives  rise 
to  another,  a  creative  principle.  Empowering  us  to  go 
from  one  part  of  reality  to  another,  to  see  how  reality  builds 
itself  up,  it  should  furnish  us  with  the  key  to  that  map  of  the 
universe  which  is  the  goal  of  philosophic  inquiry. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE 

REALITY,  we  have  said,  is  through  and  through  dual. 
It  is  free  and  constrained,  it  is  static  and  dynamic,  it  is 
term  and  relation,  individual  and  universal,  and  so  on. 
Hitherto  our  effort  has  been  to  show  that  these  contrasts 
are  not  conflicts.  But  the  very  principle  of  duality  suggests 
that  this  is  but  one  side  of  the  matter;  there  is  also  another 
side,  wherein  freedom  and  law,  static  and  dynamic,  individ- 
ual and  universal,  have  a  positive  relationship.  They  do  not 
merely  fail  to  conflict,  they  are  not  only  mutually  indif- 
ferent; they  are  also  mutually  contributory.  The  two 
aspects  are  always  of  one  and  the  same  reality.  They  are 
distinct,  yet  they  are  united ;  they  are  different,  yet  in  their 
difference  they  display  a  sameness  and  a  reciprocal  con- 
firmation. The  principle  above  announced,  of  the  free 
duality  of  reality,  was  so  to  speak  the  individualistic  formu- 
lation of  our  total  result;  it  must  be  supplemented  by  its 
correlative,  the  socialistic  rendering,  which  proclaims  the 
junction  or  union  of  the  counter-aspects.  If  the  former 
justified  the  partisan  philosophic  types  in  all  but  their 
exclusion,  the  latter  will  justify  the  synthetic  types  in  a 
similar  manner.  The  socialistic  attribute  of  reality,  when 
clearly  set  forth,  should  explain  to  us  how  it  is  that  reality 
joins  up  its  contrasting  sides.  It  should  elucidate,  as  none 
of  the  synthetic  types  was  able  to  do,  the  transition  from 
one  real  thing  or  event  to  another,  show  how  one  implies 
another,  how  event  gives  rise  to  event  —  and  show  it  in 


494  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

concrete;  in  a  word  it  should  reveal  the  way  in  which  the 
internality  of  relations  works.  For,  in  our  solution  of  the 
dialectic,  we  built  most  upon  the  principle  of  externality; 
we  showed  that  the  counterpart  members  of  each  opposition 
were  indifferent  to  each  other.  We  have  now  to  show  that 
they  are  not  only  thus  external  the  one  to  its  fellow,  but  of 
one  blood,  mutually  supporting  and  interpenetrating. 

At  first  we  must  proceed  abstractly;  we  shall,  however, 
ascend  to  the  concrete  as  soon  as  possible. 

Since  the  principle  of  reality's  free  choice  or  ultimate 
duality  has  now  been  justified,  let  us  apply  it  to  the  present 
case.  Given  any  one  fact,  we  are  at  liberty  to  fasten  upon 
it  in  its  isolation,  to  consider  its  internal  make-up,  what  it  is 
in  and  for  itself;  or  on  the  other  hand  we  may  consider  its 
connection  with  the  rest  of  the  world.  And  further,  having 
distinguished  these  aspects,  we  are  metaphysically  correct 
in  choosing  to  regard  only  their  distinctness,  and  to  say  that 
they  are  two  entirely  different  sides  of  it.  Or,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  may  choose  to  regard  their  ultimate  identity.  We 
may  declare  that  they  are  at  bottom  one  and  the  same  thing. 
Let  us  now  make  this  latter  choice;  let  us  say  that  these 
counter-aspects,  to  wit,  the  thing  by  itself  and  the  thing's 
relations,  are  one.  We  are  herein  telling  nothing  but  the 
absolute  truth;  it  is  no  merely  subjective  point  of  view, 
foreign  to  the  real  manifoldness  of  the  thing,  which  excuses 
the  statement.  Reality  is  what  we  see  it  to  be.  Now  for  a 
moment  may  we  resort  to  symbols  ?  Call  the  thing  by 
itself  A ,  and  the  thing  as  related  to  other  things  B.  The  A 
is  identical  with  B:  that  is  our  present  declaration.  But 
reality  chooses  also  to  contain  a  differentiation  within  the 
identity;  it  is  then  also  absolutely  true  that  A  differs  from 
B.  And  both  these  truths  hold,  neither  denying  the  other. 
Now  of  this  situation  there  are  certain  consequences. 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  495 

In  any  given  case,  A  and  B  have,  as  an  empirically  given 
fact,  some  specific  relation  to  each  other.  What  that  rela- 
tion is,  depends  of  course  upon  the  particular  case.  Sup- 
pose, for  instance,  that  A  and  B  are  the  two  aspects  of  a 
candle-flame  X.  Then  A  represents  the  composition  of  that 
flame  —  the  process  of  rapid  combination  of  the  oiled  wick 
with  oxygen;  and  B  represents,  say,  the  effect  of  the  flame 
upon  some  object  —  the  light-rays  perhaps  which  illuminate 
the  latter.  The  specific  difference  here  is,  among  other 
things,  a  temporal  one;  B  is  temporally  consequent  upon  A . 
In  general,  however,  the  specific  relation  between  A  and  B 
may  be  of  any  sort;  succession,  juxtaposition,  leftness, 
Tightness,  or  what  not.  But  pay  attention  for  the  moment 
only  to  the  symbols.  We  have  then  A  and  B,  and  they  are 
quite  the  same,  yet  also  different  and  specifically  so.  Call 
the  specific  relation  between  them  R.  Now  if  A  is  the  same 
as  B  then  what  is  true  of  A  is  true  of  B.  B,  being  A  over 
again  —  for  sameness  means  absolute,  numerical,  individual 
identity  or  it  means  nothing  at  all  —  does  what  A  does,  has 
the  qualities  that  A  has,  and  so  on.  But  it  is  true  of  A  that 
it  is  RB.  It  follows  that  it  is  also  true  of  B  that  it  is  RB. 
B  must  therefore  differentiate  itself;  it  must  generate,  so  to 
speak,  another  instance  of  itself,  to  which  it  is  related  by 
the  specific  difference  R.  This  second  instance  of  B  must 
be  the  same  as,  and  also  distinct  from,  the  first  instance. 
We  have  a  repetition  of  the  original  case  of  sameness-in- 
difference. Something  genuinely  new,  we  believe,  is  here 
produced  out  of  the  original  situation:  something  involved  in 
it,  but  not  tacitly  read  in  or  already  assumed.  The  process 
is  one  of  logical  deduction;  it  is,  we  think,  quite  simple, 
clear  and  distinct;  it  satisfies  the  demand  for  seeing  how 
novelty  can  arise  —  though  of  course  as  yet  in  a  very 
abstract  and  formal  kind  of  case  only.  Deduction  here 


496  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

becomes  production.  And  not  production  of  merely  one 
novelty;  for  the  second  instance  of  B  is  related  to  the  first 
as  that  first  was  related  to  A;  whence  it  too  will  produce  a 
third  instance,  and  so  on  indefinitely.  Let  the  reader  then 
fix  his  attention  upon  this  paradigm ;  we  deem  it  of  incal- 
culable importance  for  the  understanding  of  reality.  In 
fact,  it  is  the  only  principle,  so  far  as  we  know,  which  gives 
understanding  of  the  way  in  which  one  entity  may  give  rise 
to  another;  for  it  shows  how  the  former  necessitates  the 
latter. 

The  situation  before  us  is  one  in  which  the  twofoldness  of 
a  single  object  is  directly  seen  to  operate,  to  create  another 
object.  This  is  that  positive  side  of  reality  which  reveals 
the  counterpart  of  our  first  principle,  the  dualistic  one.  It 
is  far  more  momentous  than  that  one,  for  it  is  not  negative; 
it  does  not  remove  contradictions,  but  generates  novelties. 
It  cannot  dispense  with  the  first  principle,  but  it  cannot  be 
reduced  wholly  to  terms  thereof.  And  the  two  are  asym- 
metrically related.  The  first  does  no  work,  but  only  liber- 
ates, as  it  were,  the  members  of  the  real  object,  by  untying 
the  knots  which  chafe  and  bind  them;  the  second,  which 
cannot  act  until  the  first  has  performed  its  part,  does 
work  in  providing  the  world  with  a  new  being.  At  bottom, 
nevertheless,  these  two  principles  are  one;  the  first  being 
the  disjunctive  side,  with  its  either-or,  the  second,  with  its 
both-and,  the  conjunctive  side.  The  second  is  just  the 
identification  of  the  A  and  B  together  with  their  difference, 
the  former  was  just  the  separation  of  them,  of  their  same- 
ness, of  their  difference,  and  the  seeing  of  them  as  real  in 
their  indifference.  And  in  virtue  of  the  productiveness,  the 
fertility,  of  our  second  principle,  we  believe  it  to  be  that 
particular  one  which  above  all  the  philosopher  seeks;  that 
creative  principle  which  shows  how  the  parts  of  reality  are 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  497 

joined.  By  its  aid,  then,  we  should  be  able  to  furnish  a 
map  of  reality,  and  to  satisfy  that  instinct  which,  as  we 
saw  in  Chapter  I,  sets  the  initial  philosophic  problem. 
But  the  application  of  this  principle  is  a  task  of  so  great 
magnitude  and  withal  so  novel,  that  we  can  discharge  it 
only  by  slow  degrees.  In  what  follows,  then,  we  make  but 
a  beginning. 

Consider  some  natural  object :  say  an  iceberg  floating  in 
the  sea.  It  is  a  definite  body,  a  mass,  a  group  of  forces  — 
i.  e.,  substantial,  in  accord  with  the  principle  of  externality. 
It  is  much  more  also :  it  enters  into  many  relations  with  its 
environment.  It  displaces  its  own  weight  of  water,  thereby 
raising  the  level  of  the  ocean.  It  reflects  and  refracts  the 
sunlight,  affording  to  the  beholder  a  spectacle  of  marvellous 
beauty.  It  absorbs  heat  from  the  surrounding  air  and  water ; 
it  attracts  by  gravitation  much  flotsam  and  jetsam ;  and  it 
finally  disintegrates  as  the  ice  is  melted  by  the  warm  cur- 
rents of  the  ocean.  If  the  substantial  aspect  is  symbolized 
by  the  letter  A,  B  may  stand  for  any  one  or  all  of  these 
relations  between  the  iceberg  and  its  milieu.  Let  us  select 
the  phenomenon  of  reflection.  Now  witness  the  situation 
between  A  and  B.  A  designates  the  structure  and  order  of 
the  ice-crystals,  B  the  effect  of  them  in  reflecting  the  sun- 
light, say  to  a  certain  distance  outside  of  the  iceberg.  This 
reflection  B  is  the  characteristic  behaviour  of  A  and  so  far 
is  A;  they  are  in  part  the  same  thing.  Ice  is  that  which 
reflects  light  in  a  certain  way.  If  then  B  is  the  same  as  A, 
B  must  act  as  A  does.  That  is,  B  too  must  be  accompanied 
by  the  phenomenon  of  projecting  the  light-rays  further  out, 
and  to  a  distance  equal  to  the  one  just  mentioned;  and  this 
second  stage,  so  to  speak,  of  the  reflection,  similarly  implies 
a  third  and  equal  stage.  This  process,  once  begun,  clearly 
goes  on  without  end;  that  is,  light  is  reflected  outwards  in  a 


498  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

straight  line  to  an  infinite  distance.  Our  principle,  viz.,  the 
fusion  of  sameness  and  difference,  of  internal  and  external 
relations,  thus  explains  a  great  number  of  distinct  events 
beyond  the  initial  reflection  of  the  light-rays:  nothing  less, 
in  fact,  than  the  whole  course  of  the  light-rays  in  their  end- 
less journey.  And  it  explains  this  whole  course  in  detail  and 
in  particular.  We  can  see  why  the  process,  once  begun, 
must  go  on,  as  clearly  as  we  can  see  why  2  +  2  =4.  We 
do  not  have  to  content  ourselves  with  a  causal  postulate; 
we  do  not  rest  in  a  faith-attitude,  asserting  dogmatically 
that  every  event  will  have  its  effect.  We  see  directly  how 
and  why  it  has  its  effect  —  though  as  yet  in  this  instance 
only,  of  course.  Herein  is  fulfilled  for  the  present  case  that 
demand  which  no  synthetic  type  was  able  to  satisfy,  that 
we  see  how  one  fact  or  event,  one  part  of  the  universe,  leads 
on  to  another.  The  principle  of  internality  is  no  longer 
merely  a  general  axiom,  unverified  in  concrete;  it  is  an  object 
•of  sight  and  understanding.  Are  we  not  then  bound  to 
believe  that  our  second  principle  is  deserving  of  the  name 
creative  ?  It  has  shown  —  even  though  to  a  very  limited 
extent  so  far  —  a  fertility  which  no  other  principle  yet 
named  has  been  able  to  claim.  It  has  accounted  for  a  causal 
connection;  it  has  shown  how  from  a  given  initial  situation 
an  infinite  stream  of  events  —  all  the  different  stages  of  the 
light-ray  in  its  onward  progress  —  is  generated. 

Take  now  some  other  property  of  our  iceberg.  It  dis- 
places its  own  weight  of  water.  If  our  principle  is  sound, 
why  is  not  this  displacement  accompanied  by  a  further  dis- 
placement, and  so  on  —  leaving  the  ocean  heaven  knows 
where,  if  indeed  anywhere  at  all  ?  Surely  this  is  a  reductio 
ad  absurdum  of  our  contention.  But  we  have  only  to  re- 
member Newton's  first  law  of  motion:  that  a  body  in  mo- 
tion continues  in  rectilinear  motion  unless  acted  upon  by 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  499 

some  external  force.  The  displaced  water  is  shoved  out  of 
its  position  when  the  iceberg  breaks  off  from  its  parent 
glacier,  and  thereby  acquires  a  momentum  which,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  law  of  the  Conservation  of  Momentum,  con- 
tinues. The  energy  passes,  as  the  water  is  raised,  into 
potential  form,  and  as  the  water  settles  back,  into  kinetic 
form;  but  neither  the  momentum  nor  the  energy  is  lost. 
They  simply  combine  with  other  forces  to  produce  a  com- 
pound resultant.  Now  it  would  be  too  long  a  story,  to 
attempt  to  show  here  that  all  causal  action  is  but  a  case  of 
our  sameness-difference  paradigm.  That  story  we  have 
told  elsewhere  (Journal  of  Philosophy,  XI,  pp.  197,  253,  309, 
365)  and  naturally  we  cannot  ask  that  it  be  taken  for 
granted.  So  we  limit  ourselves  to  the  comparatively  simple 
cases  where  motion  is  propagated  in  a  straight  line.  For 
such  cases  it  would  seem  that  our  principle  furnishes  a  real 
explanation.  And  if  so,  to  that  extent  our  common-sense 
faith  in  the  efficacy  of  causes  is  vindicated.  The  necessary 
connection  which  Hume  was  unable  to  discern  between 
cause  and  effect,  is  brought  to  light. 

But  we  may  carry  the  application  a  little  further.  The 
doctrine  that  the  same  causes  give  the  same  effects  —  which 
some  regard  as  the  essence  of  natural  law  —  is  a  direct  con- 
sequence of  the  creative  principle.  For,  if  cause  A  is  suc- 
ceeded by  effect  B  once,  then  where  we  have  again  the 
individual  event  A  we  should  have  the  same  effect  B.  If 
A 2  is  the  same  as  A\  and  if  A \  is  RB\  (related  to  B\  by  the 
link  of  sequence)  then  A2  must  also  be  related  in  the  same 
way  to  Bi,  and  we  shall  have  B\  over  again,  or  Bz.  In  this 
manner  we  justify  that  postulate  which  is  called  the  Uni- 
formity of  Nature.  Induction,  by  common  consent,  rests 
upon  such  a  postulate;  and  thereby  we  have  explained  the 
validity  of  inductive  reasoning. 


500  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Of  course,  we  must  expect  to  be  confronted  at  once  by  a 
reductio  ad  absurdum;  any  philosophic  doctrine  must  expect 
that,  since  it  amis  to  be  universal  and  since  there  will 
always  be  special  cases  where  its  truth  is  overlaid  with  other 
truths.  There  is  a  very  easy  reductio:  several,  indeed,  of 
which  we  select  a  typical  one.  If  sameness  and  difference 
work  together  as  alleged,  to  create  a  new  entity,  then  see 
what  results:  this  pen  is  like  the  other  pen,  i.  e.,  in  part 
identical  with  it;  this  pen  is  now  writing,  therefore  the  other 
must  be.  But  (presumably)  it  isn't.  Or  again:  my  hat 
is  in  part  identical  with  your  hat,  since  both  are  black;  my 
hat  has  been  (with  me)  on  a  long  sea  voyage  —  therefore 
yours  has.  Or  in  general:  —  almost  anything  is  in  part 
identical  with  almost  anything  else,  therefore  it  has  all  the 
properties  of  almost  anything  else.  Could  there  be  a  sillier 
view  ?  Now  we  might  know  such  an  argument  is  wrong, 
because  a  similar  argument  can  be  brought  against  every 
law  whatsoever.  Thus,  the  earth  attracts  bodies;  but  a 
hydrogen  balloon  moves  away  from  the  earth  —  therefore 
the  earth  does  not  attract  it.  Or  —  action  and  reaction 
are  equal,  but  a  ball  of  putty  does  not  rebound  from  the 
ground  as  violently  as  it  strikes,  hence  there  is  no  such  law. 
We  know,  of  course,  that  the  law  is  not  discredited  when 
other  laws  combine  with  it  to  produce  a  resultant.  Just  so 
with  our  principle.  It  never  ceases  to  act,  but  its  action  is 
always  compounded  with  that  of  another  and  negative 
principle,  which  runs:  A  is  other  than  B,  but  B  is  RC, 
therefore  A  is  other  than  RC.  (We  are  talking  of  individ- 
uals, A,  B,  and  C  and  a  particular  relation  R  and  identity 
between  A ,  B,  and  RC:  no  notion  of  the  class  is  yet  pre- 
supposed. In  magnitudes  this  principle  becomes :  if  A  =  B, 
and  B±C,  then  A  =*=  C.)  Take,  for  example,  the  colours 
yellow  and  red.  Yellow  is  a  bright  colour,  and  so  is  red ;  so 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  5OI 

far  they  are  identical;  but  yellow  is  also  a  different  colour 
from,  other  than,  red,  so  that  the  identical  brightness  takes 
on  in  addition  a  difference:  the  brightness  of  red,  while 
resembling  that  of  yellow,  is  also  in  part  of  a  different 
quality  from  that  of  yellow.  Suppose  now  the  reductio  ad 
absurdum  is  proposed :  yellow  is  identical  with  red  but  red  is 
complementary  to  green  therefore  yellow  is  complementary 
to  green.  It  is  obvious  enough  that  the  reasoning  is  sound  as 
far  as  it  goes.  In  so  far  as  yellow  has  that  peculiar  sort  of 
brightness  that  is  found  in  red,  so  far  yellow  is  identical  with 
red,  and  to  that  degree,  neglecting  the  specific  difference  of 
yellow  from  red,  we  may  call  yellow  complementary  to 
green.  The  only  thing  that  would  forbid  this  train  of  rea- 
soning is  that  we  should  not  be  permitted  to  analyze  re- 
semblance into  partial  identity;  but  in  Chapter  VIII  (on 
Intellectualism)  we  saw  that  such  analysis  is  always  per- 
missible. To  return  now  to  the  earlier  reductiones.  This 
pen  is  in  part  identical  with  a  certain  other  pen;  this  pen  is 
writing  —  therefore  the  other  is  writing,  which  it  is  n't. 
Now  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  qualities  which  are  identical  in 
both  pens  are  in  the  pen  which  is  writing;  and  in  that  sense 
the  other  pen  is  doing  just  what  this  pen  is  doing.  But  take 
account  also  of  the  differences.  The  other  pen  is  off  there 
in  a  drawer  where  no  hand  touches  it,  therefore  it  cannot  be 
writing;  the  apparent  contradiction  is  resolved  on  the  part 
of  reality  by  the  fact  of  the  two  instances  of  the  common 
qualities:  one  of  which  is  writing  while  the  other  isn't. 
When  we  speak  of  that  other  pen  we  mean  to  designate  the 
individuality  of  it,  the  differences  which  mark  it  off  from  this 
one;  so  we  say  that  it  is  not  writing.  But  if  we  were  to 
neglect  those  differences  and  to  mean  by  it  those  attributes 
only  which  it  shares  with  this  pen,  then  we  could  truthfully 
say  that  that  pen  was  writing.  Do  we  not  often,  indeed, 


502  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

speak  thus  without  being  charged  with  falsehood  ?  Do  I 
not  say  that  7  voted  when  the  man  to  whom  I  gave  my 
proxy  voted  in  my  stead  ?  Do  we  not  say  of  a  photograph 
or  landscape-painting  "  What  a  beautiful  view!  "  when  it  is 
the  original  that  is  denoted  through  its  identities  with  the 
copy  ?  We  have  only  to  recall  the  well-nigh  universal  em- 
ployment of  representation  in  our  lives  to  see  how  frequently 
we  single  out  the  sameness  of  different  individuals,  and 
treat  the  one  as  if  it  were  doing  what  the  other  is  doing.  In 
truth,  we  never  can  tell  beforehand  to  how  great  an  extent 
we  may  identify  things  even  the  most  diverse.  "  Every- 
thing in  Nature,"  said  Emerson  somewhere,  "has  all  the 
powers  of  Nature  "  ;  and  we  see  why  that  is  so.  In  a  very 
true  sense  the  sameness  between  the  parts  of  reality  permits 
us  to  say  that  one  part  does  what  it  is,  as  an  individual, 
very  far  from  doing.  This  is  not  poetry  —  at  least  in  the 
anti-logical  connotation  of  that  term  —  but  is  in  accord  with 
the  strictest  logic.  And  so,  to  return  to  our  absurd  second 
instance  above:  if  my  hat  has  been  around  Cape  Horn  then 
the  identical  qualities  in  yours  have  indeed  had  that  same 
experience.  If  it  suits  your  purpose  to  consider  my  par- 
ticular hat  a  representative  of  yours,  you  may  consider  that 
yours  has  had  the  benefit  of  the  experiences  which  mine 
has  suffered.  The  absurdity  of  the  illustration  lies  in  the 
fact  that  we  can  hardly  conceive  any  good  practical  reason 
why  one  hat  should  thus  represent  another;  but  there  is 
nothing  in  the  logic  of  the  matter  to  prevent  it.  In  so  far 
as  you  separate  the  individual  marks  of  your  hat  from  those 
of  mine,  so  far  yours  has  done  otherwise  than  mine;  in  so 
far  as  you  identify  them,  the  one  has  done  what  the  other 
has  done.  There  are  two  different  points  of  view  about  the 
matter,  that  is  all;  and  neither  denies  the  other.  There 
is  no  reductio;  the  one  object  does  what  the  other  object 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  503 

does,  and  it  does  also  much  that  the  other  object  does 
not  do. 

Coming  back  to  the  creative  principle,  we  may  now  ask 
how  it  enables  our  thought  to  pass  "  with  a  ground  and  a 
reason  "  from  any  one  fact  outward  to  others  more  or  less 
contemporaneous  with  it  ?  Certain  causal  deductions  from 
one  fact  to  its  later  effects  have  perhaps  been  justified,  and 
therein  we  have  taken  our  first  actual  step  in  the  philo- 
sophical journey  through  the  universe.  But  the  whole 
system  of  pluralism  has  not  been  touched;  the  reply  to  that 
system,  which  we  gave  in  Chapter  XII,  remains  based 
solely  upon  faith,  even  though  properly  based.  And  faith 
is  not  enough.  We  must  try  to  find  some  tangible  thread 
which  joins  those  distinct  parts  of  the  world,  showing  how 
one  fact  of  itself  implies  other  facts.  We  have  not  yet 
solved  the  problem  set  by  the  synthetic  types.  The  iceberg 
of  our  example  above  is  forever  distinct  from  the  sea,  the 
atmosphere,  the  sun's  rays,  and  the  admiring  beholder. 
How  does  it  involve  all  of  these  ?  And  in  general,  how  does 
the  internal  constitution  and  behaviour  of  any  one  fact  or 
event  show  the  existence  and  the  character  of  the  remainder 
of  the  universe  ? 

It  shows  them  thus.  The  single  fact,  iceberg-reflecting- 
light  is  a  compound  affair.  It  is  constituted  by  the  make-up 
of  the  ice-crystals,  and  by  the  light  impinging  upon  them 
from  however  short  a  distance  outside,  and  being  reflected 
back.  Now  this  impinging  of  the  light  upon  the  ice  is  a 
process  logically  quite  similar  to  the  reflection  outward.  As 
the  reflection  proceeds  outward  indefinitely  in  its  effects, 
so  the  impact  must  have  come  inward  from  an  indefinitely 
long  chain  of  causes.  The  symbols  A  and  B  might  be  ap- 
plied here,  just  as  above.  Let  the  impact  of  the  light  on  the 
ice  be  A ,  and  the  incoming  light-ray,  just  before  impact,  B. 


504  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

Then  A  is  the  effect  of  B,  and  in  accordance  with  the  defini- 
tion of  causation  already  noted,  there  is  a  sameness  between 
the  two.  This  is  our  typical  situation  again;  the  sameness- 
in-difference  of  A  and  B  implies  a  further  cause  C  of  which 
B  is  the  effect,  and  so  on  forever.  Thus  the  effect  implies 
the  cause  outside  that  effect.  And  in  this  way  we  may 
detect  in  the  here-and-now  behaviour  of  an  object  the  pres- 
ence, however  remote,  of  a  causal  agent  producing  a  part  of 
that  behaviour.  The  Hegelians  of  course  use  these  same 
causal  illustrations  to  show  the  interpenetration  of  things; 
only  they  have  not  believed  it  possible  for  human  thought  to 
explain  the  causal  nexus.  We,  in  grounding  that  nexus,  in 
showing  its  real  necessity,  have  rendered  their  illustrations 
fertile  for  an  intelligent  comprehension  of  the  matter;  we 
have  empowered  the  intellect  to  go  "  with  a  ground  and  a 
reason  "  from  effect  to  cause,  or  from  cause  to  effect.  There 
is  brought  to  light  no  mere  uniform  sequence,  but  a  real 
objective  necessity.  It  is  the  necessary  connection  which 
binds  the  behaviour  of  the  particular  fact  to  its  remote 
causes.  And  it  is  not  without  interest  to  note  that  our 
creative  principle  has  restored  causation  to  that  eminence 
from  which  it  had  been  dragged  by  the  inability  of  phi- 
losophers to  understand  it.  The  Aristotelian-Thomistic 
system,  with  the  wisdom  of  common  sense,  has  steadily 
refused  to  dethrone  this  most  useful  of  all  concepts;  and 
herein  its  insight  is  justified.  Indeed,  the  failure  of  philos- 
ophy to  explain  anything  whatsoever  is  bound  to  go  with  its 
renunciation  of  this  category;  for  causation  is  the  category 
which  above  all  others  contains  the  notion  of  creation  — 
and  if  that  is  not  understood,  neither  is  anything  explained. 
Modern  criticism  has  condemned  causal  efficacy  because  it 
has  seen  that  a  law  is  no  explanation  of  a  particular  instance 
of  the  law.  Quite  true :  the  stone  does  not  fall  because  of  the 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  505 

law  of  gravitation.  But  it  is  over-hasty  to  conclude  that 
since  the  particular  is  not  explained  by  the  universal  (as 
Aristotle  thought)  it  is  not  explicable.  Our  own  account 
shows  that  it  is  explained  by  a  preceding  particular  event  of 
dual  structure.  Laws  do  not  explain,  but  they  are  "  short- 
hand resumes  "  of  similar  occurrences  which  are  explained 
by  similar  predecessors. 

The  extent  to  which  the  scientist  has  been  able  to  trace  in 
isolated  events  the  action  of  far  distant  events  —  distant  in 
time,  or  in  space  only,  or  in  both  —  is  today  very  great 
indeed.  The  rapid  enlargement  of  our  knowledge  of  electri- 
cal phenomena  has  furnished  impressive  instances  of  this 
sort:  as  when,  for  instance,  the  magnetic  storms  on  our 
globe  are  shown  to  depend  upon  certain  electrical  conditions 
in  the  sun.  It  is  true  that  this  tracing  of  one  fact  in  another 
is  by  no  means  complete,  nor  can  be,  perhaps,  until  our 
science  is  complete;  but  it  is  much  to  have  justified  in 
concrete  the  principle  of  internal  relations  to  the  degree 
already  done.  The  empirical  indications  are  strong  that 
every  fact  contains  in  itself  the  imprint  of  the  rest  of  the 
universe;  and  hereby  we  find  confirmed  Leibnitz's  doctrine 
of  the  monads,  those  mirrors  of  the  universe.  But  we  avoid 
the  pit  of  universal  relativity  into  which  Leibnitz  is  said  to 
have  fallen,  by  the  other  side  of  the  whole  matter,  the  inner 
constitution  of  the  monad ;  for  that  inner  constitution  shows 
an  unpredictable  reaction,  an  irreducible  factor  in  the  re- 
sultant behaviour.  Every  fact,  probably,  is  a  mirror  of  the 
universe,  but  each  mirror  contributes  as  it  were  a  positive 
colour  of  its  own  to  the  picture. 

The  reason  why  previous  attempts  to  get  from  one  part  of 
the  universe  to  another  have  failed,  is  that  they  started 
from  a  single  instead  of  a  dual  base.  From  one  you  cannot 
get  anything  except  what  is  tacitly  presupposed  in  it;  any 


506  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

appearance  of  productivity  is  due  only  to  the  hiddenness  of 
the  presupposition.  The  logical  situation  here  is  like  the 
biological.  Fertilization  proceeds  not  from  one  sex  alone 
but  requires  the  union  of  two.  As  the  fruitful  element  of 
language  and  thought  is  the  proposition  or  the  judgment, 
with  its  twofold  structure  of  subject  and  predicate;  as  the 
working  element  of  society  is  the  family,  rooted  in  the  sex- 
contrast;  as  the  foundation  of  serial  reasoning  in  mathe- 
matics lies  in  the  binomial  theorem,  with  its  two  cases 
sufficing  for  the  whole  demonstration;  as  electrical  phe- 
nomena depend  upon  positive  and  negative  charges;  so  at 
the  very  heart  of  reality  itself  we  find  that  duality  is  the 
necessary  and  sufficient  condition  of  intelligibility  and  pro- 
ductiveness. If  we  had  studied,  for  instance,  our  iceberg  as 
a  term  alone,  without  any  external  reference,  we  should 
never  have  found  implication  of  aught  beyond  the  original 
datum.  The  appearance  of  the  ice-crystals,  their  form, 
their  smooth  contour,  their  consolidation  —  all  these  prop- 
erties by  themselves  are  but  so  many  dead  brute  facts. 
"  Brute  "  is  the  only  word  for  it:  they  provide  no  chance 
for  the  understanding  to  work.  What  is  given  is  given  and 
what  is  not  given  is  not  given.  There  is  no  possible  basis  for 
inferring  from  an  isolated  fact  to  a  cause  of  it.  We  are  in  an 
Eleatic  system  as  cold  and  barren  as  the  ice  of  our  illustra- 
tion. But  once  introduce  that  element  of  external  reference, 
to  wit,  the  light  impinging  from  ever  so  little  a  distance  out- 
side the  iceberg,  and  we  can  progress;  we  can  infer  to  some- 
thing more  than  this  given  twofold  datum.  We  can  combine 
the  two  aspects  of  the  situation  and  from  the  combination 
generate  a  new  implicate;  this  new  implicate  in  turn  we  can 
combine  with  the  original,  and  produce  a  fourth,  and  so 
onward.  The  small  amount  of  external  reference  that  has 
fertilized  the  single  datum  of  the  iceberg  in  itself  does  not 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  507 

secretly  contain  what  we  proceed  to  discover;  any  more 
than  an  inch  contains  a  yard.  Given  an  inch,  however,  we 
proceed  to  take  an  ell;  given  a  point,  a  bare  unit,  and  we 
can  take  nothing.  We  did  not  presuppose  that  the  light 
which  impinges  upon  the  surface  of  the  crystals  came  from 
a  very  great  distance;  nothing  was  said  or  assumed  about 
the  original  source  of  that  light.  We  assumed  only  a  very 
small  distance:  as  small  as  you  please.  Indeed,  what  we 
assumed  was  infinitesimal  in  the  true  meaning  of  that  word ; 
for  the  infinitesimal  is  no  static  quantity,  but  one  which  is 
small  at  will.  But  this  iota  of  externality  suffices  to  im- 
pregnate the  phenomena  of  the  inner  structure;  since  it 
gives  us  the  occasion  for  applying  the  formula  of  sameness- 
in-difference  which  is  the  prototype  of  all  rationality  and 
productivity.  The  little  bit  of  externality,  identified  with 
the  primitive  monad  of  the  original  single  datum,  implies  a 
further  bit,  and  this  another,  and  thenceforth  passes  out  to 
any  required  degree. 

Yet  with  all  this  granted,  we  have  at  best  but  made  our 
landing  upon  the  shore  of  a  continent :  within  the  limits  of  a 
single  volume  we  can  do  little  more  than  indicate  its  vast 
extent.  The  doubter,  if  perhaps  in  a  generous  mood  ad- 
mitting that  we  have  landed  at  all,  will  pronounce  it  shifting 
sandbank  or  at  most  a  small  island.  It  certainly  devolves 
upon  us  to  articulate  our  universe  pretty  thoroughly  by  this 
second  principle  of  ours.  We  have  not  yet  touched  those 
vital  disagreements,  the  practical  and  emotional  issues,  of 
which  the  philosophical  quarrels  are  the  intellectual  counter- 
part. Still  less  have  we  delineated  that  fertile  union  of  the 
two  factions  in  each  issue,  which  should  present  a  workable 
plan  of  action  for  man.  Yet  if  our  formula  gives  us  such  a 
map  of  the  universe  as  we  have  been  seeking,  it  must  do  all 
this:  it  must  enable  us  to  adjust  ourselves  profitably  to  our 


508  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

great  environment.  But  as  before  undertaking  a  voyage  we 
must  possess  the  chart,  or  before  attempting  to  cope  with 
our  environment  we  must  know  its  cardinal  features,  it 
behooves  us  now  to  give  some  sort  of  outline,  however 
rough,  of  the  system  which  we  believe  our  principle  warrants. 

So  far,  reality  is  an  infinite  assemblage,  not  so  much  of 
monads,  as  of  dyads,  each  of  which  is  two-in-one.  This 
holds,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  alike  of  physical  facts,  of  mental, 
and  of  any  other  which  we  can  with  any  clearness  conceive. 
For  all  have  their  inner  substantial  aspect  as  well  as  their 
relative,  adjectival  status. 

But  how  are  these  dyads  specifically  related  ?  The  above 
seems  at  first  to  tell  us  very  little.  Does  our  principle  throw 
any  light  upon  the  fact  that  there  are  physical  objects  in 
space  and  time,  which  also  are  numerable,  have  magnitude, 
exercise  gravitation,  etc.;  that  there  are  minds  as  well  as 
bodies,  living  as  well  as  inorganic  things,  that  there  are 
values,  goods  and  evils,  as  well  as  bare  facts;  that  there  are 
many  of  each  of  these  sorts  of  being  rather  than  one  of  each; 
and  so  on  ?  These  all  are  things  to  be  explained.  Unless 
our  principle  at  least  helps  in  this  direction,  it  is  scarcely  to 
be  dignified  with  a  very  fundamental  title. 

No  one,  we  believe,  has  deduced  the  categories.  We 
showed  this  partly  in  Chapter  IV;  but  the  most  illustrious 
attempt,  that  of  Hegel,  is  an  even  more  instructive  instance 
than  those  of  our  earlier  account.  Hegel  started  with  a 
pure  monad  (Being)  out  of  which  he  drew  another  monad 
(Nothing) ;  these  two  he  combined  to  produce  a  third.  He 
was  not,  so  far  as  we  can  ascertain,  aware  of  the  principle  we 
are  extolling;  for  he  believed  that  contradiction  was  the 
spur  which  pricked  thought  onward.  We  have  tried  to 
make  clear  that  contradiction  plays  no  part  here,  except  to 
lead  to  endless  bickerings;  certainly  the  combination  of 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  509 

contradictories  would  but  annul  each.  He  saw  at  times 
—  just  how  clearly  it  is  difficult  to  say  —  that  two  are 
needed  to  produce  something;  yet  he  did  not  see  it  un- 
waveringly, for  he  subscribed  to  the  law  that  everything  of 
itself  turns  into  its  opposite.  Now  that  is  a  quite  unin- 
telligible doctrine.  True  or  not  true  it  may  be :  but  it  is  no 
explaining  principle.  Better  confess  at  the  outset  that  you 
have  an  ultimate  duality  than  try  to  draw  the  antithesis 
from  the  thesis.  But  Hegel  passed  himself  off  not  for  a 
dualist  but  for  a  monist,  and  a  monist  only;  and  thereby  he 
lost  the  pith  and  juice  of  the  creative  formula;  for  dualism 
must  be  ultimate  if  we  are  to  explain  things.  The  origin  of 
the  categories  is  still  a  virgin  soil  for  philosophy. 

Besides  this  problem  of  the  genesis  of  the  categories  is  the 
problem  of  the  main  attributes  of  each  category.  Life,  for 
instance:  why  has  it  the  attributes  of  nutrition,  secretion, 
mating,  breathing,  etc.  ?  Space:  why  is  it  infinite,  contin- 
uous, homogeneous,  and  so  on  ?  Time:  why  is  it  linear, 
irreversible,  infinite  ?  And  so  for  each  category. 

Now  these  two  problems  are,  at  least  to  some  extent, 
amenable  to  treatment  by  our  principle.  As  to  the  former: 
we  can  account  for  the  origin  of  certain  categories.  For 
instance,  generality,  or  the  universal,  or  class.  Suppose  the 
simplest  possible  dyad :  any  two  things  'which  possess  both 
sameness  and  difference.  Call  them  A  and  B.  Then  B, 
being  the  same  as  A ,  must  have  the  relation  to  B  which  A 
has,  to  wit,  difference.  B  is  therefore  different  from  B. 
(This  of  course  does  not  destroy  the  identity  of  B,  as  same- 
ness and  difference  are  not  mutually  destructive.)  This 
second  B  should  be  called  by  a  new  name,  to  distinguish  it 
from  the  first,  viz.,  C.  Now  C,  being  the  same  with  B,  must 
be,  as  B  is,  different  from  itself  —  hence  is  implied  a  new 
entity  D.  This  series  is  indefinitely  long.  Herein  is  gen- 


510  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

crated  the  notion  of  a  class;  for  we  have  a  collection  of 
individuals,  all  displaying  a  sameness,  while  the  number  of 
the  collection  actually  taken  is  indifferent.  It  is  potentially 
infinite.  Such  is  the  logical  universal  —  which  when  re- 
garded from  the  point  of  view  of  the  various  individual 
cases  of  it,  we  call  a  class.  And  we  have  produced  this 
category  by  applying  our  principle  to  just  two  individuals, 
with  nothing  general  or  universal  about  them.  They  are 
individual,  their  relation  is  an  individual  one,  and  every- 
thing about  them  is  individual.  There  is,  so  far  as  we  can 
see,  no  tacit  presupposition  which  is  later  hauled  out  of  its 
hiding-place  to  provide  some  unexpected  novelty.  There 
is  simply  production,  due  to  the  union  of  these  relations  of 
sameness  and  difference  in  accord  with  our  principle.  The 
category  of  individual  with  which  we  started  has  generated 
its  counter-category,  the  universal.  But  from  one  individual 
alone  we  could  never  have  gotten  this  result;  we  need  two, 
related  by  sameness  and  difference. 

Again,  consider  number.  The  series  we  have  above 
brought  forth  forms  the  series  of  ordinal  numbers.  It  con- 
tains a  first  and  second  instance  at  the  outset,  and  from 
these  two  it  spins  an  endless  sequence;  the  third  instance, 
fourth,  fifth,  and  so  on.  From  such  a  series,  as  is  well 
known,  can  be  obtained  many,  if  not  all,  of  the  materials  of 
arithmetic  and  algebra. 

When  we  come  to  the  genesis  of  space,  there  is  a  difficulty 
which  we  do  not  yet  know  how  to  meet.  The  property  of 
extension,  or  side-by-side-ness,  seems  qualitatively  unique 
and  not  generable.  Once  grant  this  property,  to  be  sure,  and 
we  can  deduce  a  great  many  of  the  properties  of  space. 
Given  two  points,  one  being  in  any  way  you  please  dis- 
tinguished from  the  other  —  to  the  right  of  it,  say,  or  above 
it;  then  it  follows  that  there  must  be  an  endless  series  of 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  511 

points  further  to  the  right,  or  further  above  the  former,  as 
well  as  an  endless  series  in  the  other  direction.  Given  two 
equal  areas  touching  each  other  and  differentiated  as  were 
the  points,  then  further  areas  may  be  implied  as  were  the 
further  points.  And  the  same  is  true  of  volumes.  The 
homogeneity  of  space  throughout  can  then  be  deduced,  if  we 
assume  at  the  start  only  two  bits  of  space  which  are  homo- 
geneous. But  we  do  not  at  present  know  how  to  account 
for  the  fact  that  things  have  position  at  all;  nor,  granting 
position,  can  we  deduce  therefrom  lines,  or  areas,  or  volume, 
or  even  higher  dimensions,  if  there  are  any.  That  is  a  prob- 
lem for  the  future  —  and  of  course  there  is  a  plenty  of  such 
problems.  Their  presence  simply  shows  us  that  our  map 
cannot  yet  be  completely  filled  in;  but  we  have  made  no 
claim  to  do  this.  We  claim  only  to  have  exhibited  a  prin- 
ciple which  will  remove  the  vitiating,  self-devouring  habits 
of  previous  philosophy  and  will  to  some  degree  show  us  how 
things  can  be  accounted  for.  There  may  well  be  other 
fundamental  principles  besides  our  own;  but  at  any  rate  it 
should,  by  virtue  of  the  services  it  performs,  take  its  stand 
somewhere  near  the  head  of  the  universe. 

We  hope  to  show  in  later  studies  how  the  creative  prin- 
ciple helps  to  account  for  some  of  the  other  categories  and 
their  peculiar  traits.  For  we  strongly  suspect  that  it  does  so ; 
though  naturally  we  can  ask  no  one  to  accept  our  opinion 
until  evidence  shall  have  been  produced.  The  problem  is 
at  the  outset  an  empirical  one.  We  must  learn  by  inductive 
inquiry  and  analysis  the  meaning  of  each  category;  for 
each  category's  definition  is  to  be  gathered  only  from  the 
specific  properties  of  the  facts  to  which  that  category  ap- 
plies. We  must  then  ask  whether  this  definition  can  be 
accounted  for  upon  the  basis  of  some  simple  dyad ;  whether, 
indeed,  the  definitions  of  the  many  categories  can  be  ac- 


512  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

counted  for,  by  the  aid  of  our  principle,  from  one  another, 
or  from  some  ultimate  simple  dyad.  The  reason  why  we  can 
hardly  help  believing  in  the  efficacy  of  our  principle  to 
accomplish  this  task  is  that  it  furnishes  so  clear  a  paradigm 
of  productiveness,  of  the  generation  of  one  entity  out  of 
another  (dual)  entity.  To  solve  that  problem  of  generation 
is,  in  embryo,  to  solve  the  world-problem;  for  the  whole 
world-problem  is  to  show  the  why  of  things,  their  origin  or 
genesis.  If  the  universe  is  an  intelligible  affair  —  and  the 
axiom  of  internal  relations  is  but  the  registration  of  our 
indomitable  faith  that  it  is  so  —  then  somehow  the  main 
categories  of  it  must  be  capable  of  deduction ;  and  the  type 
of  all  fertile  deduction  seems  to  be  before  us  in  our  second 
principle.  It  is  true  that  we  have  not  shown  this  to  be  the 
only  type;  there  may  be  others.  Yet  a  little  reflection  sug- 
gests that  that  is  probably  the  case.  For  it  was  just  by  a 
perverse  interpretation,  a  dismemberment,  of  this  simple 
dyad,  that  philosophy  emasculated  itself;  by  refusing  to 
admit  both  terms  of  the  duality  and  clinging  to  one  and 
excluding  the  other,  or  again,  admitting  both  together  and 
denying  each  in  itself  —  never,  in  short,  admitting  on  equal 
footing  both  part  and  whole,  both  sameness  and  difference, 
in  that  lawful  wedlock  which  alone  can  generate  legitimate 
offspring.  If  then  the  recognition  of  this  dyad  is  the  one 
thing  needful  for  the  salvation  of  philosophic  thought,  it 
looks  as  if  it  were  the  one  thing  which  knits  together  the 
parts  of  reality;  for  what  is  thought  but  the  humble  fol- 
lower of  reality  ?  But  this  is  at  present  only  a  high  prob- 
ability, not  a  proved  result. 

At  any  rate,  the  philosophic  child  has  taken  his  first  step 
onward ;  and  though  he  will  certainly  fall  often  and  as  often 
mark  tune  quite  after  the  custom  of  his  caste,  it  seems  to  be 
only  a  matter  of  patience,  till  he  walks  about  and  surveys, 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  513 

with  trigonometric  exactitude,  the  whole  universe.  And  he 
may  rejoice  in  freedom  from  the  old  shackles.  He  will  no 
longer  have  to  square  his  findings  with  epistemological  criti- 
cism; he  need  not  fear  that  he  is  "  hypostasizing  "  any  con- 
cepts, or  believing  in  abstractions;  he  need  not  pause  to 
refute  the  stock  solution  of  his  problem  by  realism,  or  ideal- 
ism, or  pluralism,  or  nominalism,  or  pragmatism,  or  any  other 
factional  ism;  for  all  those  views,  considered  as  possible 
foes,  are  equally  true,  irrelevant,  and  infertile.  He  need  ask 
only  whether  his  results  depend  upon  correct  observation 
and  inference,  and  whether  they  are  able  to  explain,  i.  e., 
logically  to  generate,  the  facts  they  are  meant  to  illuminate. 

We  turn  finally  to  the  practical  issues.  Obviously  their 
solution  is  not,  like  that  of  the  theoretical,  one  which  can  be 
assured  on  paper.  We  might  make  certain  proposals,  or 
utter  injunctions,  but  even  were  this  done  with  the  greatest 
wisdom  and  impressiveness,  there  could  be  no  guaranty  of 
their  realization.  Reality  solves  its  own  problems  in  the  very 
act  of  existing;  but  the  practical  solutions  depend  upon  the 
free  choice  of  human  individuals.  In  fact,  it  looks  as  if  we 
must  go  further,  and  say  that  the  practical  evils  of  man's 
life  are  inevitable. 

Man's  difficulties  in  living  arise  from  two  sources;  the 
one  being  a  more  or  less  wilful  perversity  and  the  other  a 
certain  restriction  imposed  on  him  by  the  environment. 
Wilful  perversity,  we  say;  but  there  are  many  degrees  of 
this,  shading  down  into  simple  inability.  A  man  may  re- 
main idle,  though  with  leisure  enough,  from  sheer  laziness; 
he  may  be  seduced  from  the  human  problems  by  a  round  of 
social  pleasure  (this  holds  perhaps  of  women  more  than  of 
men);  he  may  belong  to  too  many  organizations  and  be 
overridden  with  their  administrative  detail  (a  rather  fa- 
vourite vice  of  our  gregarious  epoch);  being  of  moderate 


5 14  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

means,  he  may  beget  more  children  than  he  can  afford  to 
maintain,  and  be  driven  to  make  more  money  —  a  not 
uncommon  failing,  whose  cruelty  is  not  excused  by  thought- 
lessness or  tradition.  Or,  zealously  studying  the  needs  of 
mankind,  he  may  allow  himself  to  become  so  obsessed  by 
one  doctrine  as  to  neglect  the  truth  of  the  counter-doctrine; 
this  is  the  prevailing  fault,  perhaps,  of  those  who  really 
wish  to  think  and  labour  for  the  common  good.  Again, 
many  an  earnest  soul,  truly  interested  in  the  graver  prob- 
lems, is  so  wearied  by  the  day's  toil  that  he  cannot  take  them 
up  with  sufficient  seriousness;  enough  to  keep  the  wolf  from 
the  door  from  day  to  day.  Putting  off  the  time  of  reflection 
till  he  shall  have  established  his  family  in  secure  comfort, 
he  becomes  at  length  so  absorbed  in  the  daily  business  that 
he  cannot  change.  Or,  once  more,  he  may  be  the  victim  of 
ignorance;  nobody  has  taught  him  the  imperative  duty  of 
ameliorating  the  whole  lot  of  man.  Who  is  any  one  that  he 
should  blame  another  for  such  ineffectiveness  ?  Yet,  though 
we  know  not  where  to  draw  the  line,  it  seems  certain  that 
some  men,  having  opportunity  to  study  the  practical  issues, 
do  it  not,  or  else,  studying  them,  they  adopt  one  or  another 
solution  in  so  exclusive  a  fashion  as  to  kill  the  spirit  of  free 
inquiry.  For  this  we  cannot  but  impute  blame;  and  as  long 
as  such  a  fanatical  attitude  is  indulged,  so  long  will  men  fail 
to  meet  their  life-problems.  But  the  other  factor  remains 
potent  in  any  case.  Reality  is  no  doubt,  from  the  human 
point  of  view,  capricious  and  unjust.  She  limits  the  re- 
sources on  which  we  must  draw  if  we  are  to  live.  The  supply 
of  material  goods,  as  well  as  of  some  that  are  not  material, 
is  not  adequate  to  the  demand.  The  more  land  one  man 
owns,  the  less  is  left  for  others ;  the  more  money  he  possesses, 
the  less  another  can  possess;  and  so  on.  The  very  concep- 
tion of  economic  value  is  built  upon  the  conception  of 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  51$ 

limited  supply.  The  problems  of  social  readjustment,  the 
issues  of  capital  and  labour,  of  private  and  state  ownership, 
et  al.,  grow  out  of  this  situation.  But  not  these  problems 
only.  Time  is  available  to  man  only  in  restricted  quantities. 
If  one  devotes  his  best  years  to  trifling,  he  has  once  for  all 
lost  the  opportunity  of  being  useful  to  society  in  any  great 
measure.  And  the  sober-minded  also  feel  time's  pinch.  We 
want  to  be  well  informed:  we  would  acquaint  ourselves 
with  all  the  scientific  knowledge,  the  great  works  of  art,  the 
events  of  the  day,  the  history  of  nations,  et  sic  ultra;  but  the 
time  fails.  And  in  many  other  ways  the  environment  holds 
us  down  to  mediocrity,  even  to  poverty,  spiritual  and 
material.  It  looks  impossible,  even  with  the  best  will  in  the 
world,  to  carry  out  in  the  practical  sphere  any  such  scheme 
of  reconciliation  as  we  have  expounded  in  the  theoretical. 

As  regards  the  free  choices  of  men  and  women,  they  can 
doubtless  never  be  discounted  beforehand.  So  long  as  the 
poor  carelessly  beget  too  many  children,  or  insist  upon  buy- 
ing as  good  meat  as  their  wealthier  fellows  buy;  so  long  as 
the  idle  rich  set  up  an  exclusive  "  society  "  which  is  con- 
cerned only  with  itself  —  so  long  will  the  best  projects  fail. 
Nevertheless  the  region  within  which  such  choice  is  exer- 
cised, may  be  much  restricted.  Education,  increased  sense 
of  social  responsibility,  legislation,  even  on  occasion  force, 
may  help  in  this  direction.  Indeed,  they  are  steadily  doing 
so.  It  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  the  altruistic  spirit  is 
spreading.  But  unless  that  spirit  is  aided  by  intelligent 
manipulation  of  human  resources,  it  may  do  as  much  harm 
as  good.  What  we  need  is  some  plan  or  method  which  will 
minimize  the  incompatibility  of  your  possessing  sufficient 
means  of  life  and  my  possessing  them.  The  niggardliness 
of  the  material  world,  of  time,  of  human  powers,  must  some- 
how be  reduced;  the  contradiction,  hitherto  deemed  so 


516  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

obvious,  between  your  wealth  and  mine,  your  success  and 
mine,  must  be  exorcized. 

Now  in  the  attainment  of  these  results  two  requirements 
must  be  kept  in  mind ;  the  one  is  concerned  with  details  and 
the  other  with  the  general  object.    The  former  is  a  matter 
for  expert  knowledge  in  special  fields;   the  latter  can  be 
fulfilled,  we  believe,  only  by  philosophy.    Each  has  tended 
to  despise  the  other,  and  disaster  has  resulted,  and  will  ever 
result,  while  that  is  the  case.     No  philosopher,  without 
expert  knowledge  of  economics,  social  psychology,  hygiene, 
machinery,  etc.,  can  hope  to  launch  upon  the  world  a  plan 
of  social  organization  with  any  hope  of  success.     Such 
Utopias  have  been  proposed  often,  and  with  different  degrees 
of  practicability;  according  as  the  originator  was  well  or  ill 
acquainted  with  the  actualities  of  human  nature  and  the 
material  environment.    They  have  all  more  or  less  failed, 
just  because  of  the  impossibility  of  the  needed  expert  knowl- 
edge.   On  the  other  hand,  experts  in  economics,  sociology, 
hygiene,  or  social  legislation,  have  generally  not  had  a 
sufficiently  broad  philosophic  point  of  view.     The  chief 
difference,  perhaps,  between  the  older  Utopias  and   the 
modern  socialistic  schemes,  resides  in  this :  the  former  were 
too  exclusively  philosophical,  and  the  latter  are  too  exclu- 
sively utilitarian,  or  materialistic,  or  somehow  one-sided. 
Now  in  this  situation,  the  philosopher's  part  is  to  point  out 
the  ideals  which  must  be  continually  kept  in  mind,  to  which 
the  experts  must  adapt  their  schemes.    If  the  latter  do  not 
do  this,  they  will  but  renew  the  old  battles  between  individ- 
ual and  society,  authority  and  freedom.    It  is  reserved  for 
the  philosopher  to  indicate,  along  general  lines,  the  com- 
bination of  the  two  counter-ideals  which  can  alone  found  a 
workable  solution.    More  than  this  he  cannot  do;   there  is 
always  a  distinction  between  the  general  law  and  the  specific 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  517 

application.  The  dualism  which  holds  everywhere  else  holds 
here  also.  If  it  were  not  so,  there  would  be  no  other  knowl- 
edge than  philosophical  knowledge;  but  we  saw  at  the  very 
beginning  that  philosophy  is  distinct  from  the  special  fields 
of  science,  art,  religion,  and  practice,  and  that  each  is  needed 
for  the  best  kind  of  living.  At  the  same  time,  the  philo- 
sophic contribution  to  the  practical  solutions  must  occupy 
a  leading  position:  the  relation  between  philosopher  and 
specialist  is  an  asymmetrical  one,  like  that  between  the 
law  and  the  jurist  who  interprets  it  to  fit  the  particular 
occasion. 

The  ideal  is  to  combine  the  two  antagonist  principles  so 
that  each  fosters  the  other.  Now  the  institution  which  so 
unites  the  individualistic  and  the  socialistic  factors  is  divi- 
sion of  labour.  The  spirit  of  this  institution  is  organic  and 
systematic;  it  gives  a  certain  scope  to  individual  preference 
and  ability,  at  the  same  time  making  them  conduce  to  the 
collective  interest.  But  it  is  of  the  very  essence  of  such  a 
system  that  it  is  not  symmetrical.  Individuals  never  will 
be  equal  in  native  endowment;  some  will  be  clearer-headed 
and  more  devoted  to  the  common  good  than  others.  Initia- 
tive, discovery,  and  invention  will  therefore  come  from 
individual  enterprise;  and  the  centering  of  responsibility 
and  authority  in  one,  or  a  few  individuals,  is  a  corollary  of 
this.  Every  government,  every  organization  for  any  prac- 
tical end,  presumably,  must  therefore  be  a  kind  of  aristoc- 
racy. The  more  intelligent  and  public-spirited  are  the  ones 
who  should  govern  a  nation;  not  the  great  mass  of  the 
people.  That  mass  is  too  unwieldy,  too  slow-moving,  too 
inexpert,  to  judge  quickly  and  wisely  upon  difficult  ques- 
tions. The  principle  of  division  of  labour  requires  that  the 
labour  of  governing  should  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  small 
minority.  How  then  are  we  to  select  for  our  rulers  such 


51 8  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

well-endowed  individuals,  whose  very  individuality  consists 
in  this  devotion  and  this  ability  to  exercise  it  intelligently  ? 
As  Plato  long  ago  saw,  this  is  the  first  great  problem  of 
politics.  But  he  himself  did  not  answer  it;  for  however 
admirable  was  the  system  of  training  which  he  advocated 
as  the  means  of  selecting  these  guardians,  he  had  to  pre- 
suppose some  already  existing  power  which  could  and  would 
carry  out  that  training.  We,  with  our  government  by  popu- 
lar vote,  have  no  very  sound  criterion  of  selection.  For  see: 
with  us  there  must  always  be  two  parties,  since  there  will 
always  be,  in  some  form  or  other,  the  same  dualism  of 
purposes  that  pervades  all  the  needs  of  men.  It  may  take 
the  shape  of  the  business  interests  versus  the  "labouring" 
classes,  tariff  versus  free  trade,  national  honour  versus 
pacifism,  manhood  suffrage  versus  the  democratic  project 
of  universal  suffrage  —  or  any  other  of  those  issues  with 
which  we  are  today  wrestling  —  but  always  we  may  expect 
to  have  two  rival  claims  to  adjust  and  consequently  a  con- 
solidation into  two  principal  parties.  And  while  with  a 
smaller  group  of  experts  such  differences  of  opinion  may  be 
settled  by  free  discussion,  that  is  hardly  feasible  with  the 
great  mass  of  the  people.  The  logical  result  will  always  be, 
to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  party  organization,  and  the  well- 
known  evils  thereof.  Accordingly,  even  were  the  bulk  of 
the  people  the  best  judges  of  the  fitness  of  their  president 
and  legislators,  the  institution  of  the  popular  vote  would  in 
a  measure  defeat  itself .  But  in  any  case  they  are  not;  it  is 
really  quite  ridiculous  to  suppose  that  the  vote  of  a  habitual 
drunkard  should  count  as  much  as  that  of  a  professor  of 
political  science. 

Wrong  it  doubtless  would  be  to  deprive  any  of  the  ruled 
of  a  voice  in  the  choosing  of  the  ruler;  every  mite  has  its 
needs,  and  its  point  of  view  should  be  represented.  But  it  is 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  519 

equally  wrong,  to  reduce  all  voices  to  the  same  level.  We 
have  rightly  cast  out  the  old  unintelligent  form  of  aristoc- 
racy; we  have  largely  abolished  its  injustices,  cruelties,  class 
privileges,  etc.  But  the  democracy  toward  which  we  are 
tending  has  its  own  injustices;  the  tyranny  of  majorities, 
the  warping  of  genius  to  the  popular  taste,  the  premium  put 
upon  social  cowardice,  the  lack  of  reverence  for  the  high  as 
against  the  low.  We  need  some  new  sort  of  aristocracy. 

Of  course,  "  equality  of  opportunity  "  is  a  perfectly  just 
ideal;  and  we  do  not  advocate  such  an  aristocracy  as  would 
prevent  its  realization.  An  aristocracy  of  altruists  is  the 
very  best  means  of  securing  it.  The  old  objection  at  once 
arises,  that  it  is  not  safe  to  give  absolute  power  to  one  or  to 
a  few;  they  will  exploit  the  people.  The  real  way  to  meet 
this  objection  is  to  make  it  safe.  In  the  old  days  of  caste,  it 
could  not  be  done ;  but  today  the  spirit  of  universal  brother- 
hood has  grown  far  beyond  what  it  was;  so  far  has  it  grown 
that  it  begins  to  be  credible  that  rulers  may  not  be  selfish 
beings.  At  any  rate,  the  best  way  to  secure  such  an  aristoc- 
racy as  we  here  speak  of  is  to  develop,  slowly  though  it  be, 
and  more  especially  in  the  young  and  impressionable,  the 
simple  virtues  of  kindness,  tolerance,  and  breadth  of  interest. 
It  is  a  matter  of  gradual  education;  but  there  is  no  short  and 
easy  road.  No  revolutions  are  needed,  no  upheavals  of  the 
existing  fabric  of  government  from  the  bottom.  It  is  in  the 
spirit,  not  in  the  letter,  that  the  victories  are  to  be  won 
which  ensure  intelligence  and  devotion  in  our  leaders.  In 
short,  there  is  only  one  way  of  bringing  into  existence  a  class 
of  men  fit  to  be  the  ruling  class,  and  that  is  by  the  insistence, 
in  season  and  out  of  season,  upon  the  altruistic  virtues. 
Then,  when  intelligence  and  expert  knowledge  are  joined  to 
these  virtues,  there  is  nothing  to  fear  from  a  ruling  class. 
And  only  in  a  society  where  there  is  a  class  like  this,  open  to 


520  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

all  who  show  themselves  fit,  are  the  social  and  individual 
motives  organically  joined. 

We  do  no  more  at  present  than  give  these  general  indica- 
tions; hoping  later  to  give  a  more  specific  account.  Our 
wish  is  now  but  to  show  that  our  dualistic  scheme  of  the 
universe  has  definite  consequences  for  human  action;  con- 
sequences which  we  believe  would  tend  to  abolish  that 
perennial  strife  which  man  wages  with  himself  and  which  a 
niggardly  Nature  had  made  so  easy.  In  spite  of  its  policy  of 
non-resistance,  of  meek  acceptance  of  all  views,  our  position 
has  its  propagandist  side,  and  demands  a  militant  attitude. 
It  is  indeed  positive,  more  positive,  we  think,  than  any 
other,  inasmuch  as  it  is  the  only  one  which  possesses  fer- 
tility. Its  rubric  is  that  the  free  union  of  two  produces  a 
third;  its  ideal  of  the  State  is  the  union  of  individualist 
and  social  motives  in  which  each,  so  to  speak,  fertilizes  the 
other;  the  good  citizen's  individuality  being  developed  by 
his  citizenship,  and  conversely. 

Even  if  the  time  is  not  yet  ripe,  to  establish  the  new 
aristocracy  here  spoken  of,  our  system  makes  a  difference 
to  our  present  political  acts.  For  instance,  at  every 
presidential  election,  it  is  probably  the  case  that  one  party 
represents  a  more  extreme  view  than  the  other;  that  the 
former  stands  for  measures  which  would  over-emphasize 
the  individualistic  motives,  or  the  socialistic.  At  the  present 
tune  we  believe  that  the  Democratic  party  has  taken  such 
a  one-sided  position.  It  is,  we  think,  tending  to  extol  the 
socialistic  motives  to  the  exclusion  of  the  individualistic; 
accordingly,  we  should  not  think  it  right  to  support  it. 
Some  decades  ago,  the  boot  was  on  the  other  leg;  the  Re- 
publican party  with  its  high  tariff  and  other  measures 
favouring  "  capital  "  had  emphasized  individualistic  mo- 
tives too  much,  and  on  the  whole  therefore  seemed  too  one- 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  521 

sided.  Always  we  should  try  to  restore  the  balance,  to  avert 
the  dangers  of  political  monism.  Sometimes  it  might  hap- 
pen, however,  that  a  certain  extreme  measure  should  be 
adopted  in  order  that  its  evils  be  thoroughly  appreciated. 
One  cannot  tell  beforehand  how  the  rule  is  going  to  apply; 
always  empirical  knowledge  is  required  to  fit  the  rule  to  the 
occasion.  But  one  cannot  do  this  —  i.  e.,  one  cannot  really 
vote  intelligently  —  unless  he  knows  the  rule.  And  he  must 
keep  before  him,  we  believe,  as  the  ideal  rule  which  he  seeks 
to  approximate,  the  organic  fusion  of  the  two  counter- 
motives  which  make  up  human  society;  and  by  precept  and 
example  hasten  the  time  when  expert  knowledge  may  com- 
bine with  exceptional  endowment  and  public  spirit  to  form 
a  responsible  type  of  magistrate. 

So  much  for  a  vague  suggestion  of  the  way  of  meeting  one 
social  problem.  Let  us  make  now  some  analogous  applica- 
tions in  the  sphere  of  individual  morality.  Hitherto  it  has 
been  too  common  to  assume  here  an  exclusive  attitude;  if 
I  do  the  right  thing,  it  matters  little  to  me  what  you  do.  At 
any  rate,  it  matters  little  to  the  morality  of  my  act  what  you 
do.  Since  generosity  is  a  virtue,  shall  I  be  generous  when 
my  being  so  makes  you  less  considerate  or  just  ?  Suppose 
you  ask  me  to  lend  you  a  sum  which  I  could  well  afford  to 
give  you,  I  knowing  that  you  are  shiftless  and  ought  to  feel 
the  pinch  of  want  a  little  to  learn  the  lesson  of  thrift.  Many 
a  kind-hearted  person  has  been  admired  for  an  impulsive 
generosity  which  increased  the  sum-total  of  immorality. 
Should  a  criminal  be  pardoned  because  "  the  quality  of 
mercy  .  .  .  blesseth  him  that  gives  and  him  that  takes  "  ? 
Ought  he  not,  in  justice  to  society,  and  in  obedience  to  that 
motive  of  all  law,  the  prevention  of  crime,  to  pay  the  de- 
creed penalty  ?  These  are  not  idle  issues  today;  we  see 
every  few  days  cases  like  this  where  the  admiration  of  that 


522  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

chiefest  of  modern  virtues,  sympathy,  is  conceived  in  such 
exclusion  as  to  preclude  other  virtues  no  less  necessary  to 
society.  This  solution  we  offer  is  of  course  nothing  new,  yet 
we  believe  it  is  much  needed.  Our  exaggeration  today  of 
that  social  virtue,  kindness,  is  working  dead  against  the 
individual  virtue  of  prudence.  The  real  kindness  is  that 
which  endeavours  to  identify  the  benefit  of  the  recipient 
with  that  of  society.  Reform  the  criminal,  but  let  him  suffer 
punishment  too;  refuse  your  careless  friend,  but  show  him 
why  you  do  so.  Devotion  to  a  person  who  is  doing  wrong 
may  be  consistent  with  a  certain  severity  of  treatment  — 
as  the  parent's  love  of  a  child  is  consistent  with  punishment. 
Fortunately  the  progress  of  mankind  has  made  the  above 
remarks  rather  trite;  but  they  are  the  precise  application 
of  our  principle,  and  they  need  emphasis. 

A  mode  of  conduct  which  creates  further  good  conduct, 
even  as  the  cause  creates  an  effect  like  itself  —  that  is  the 
only  true,  because  the  only  productive  morality.  An  act  of 
kindness  which  tends  to  develop  the  recipient's  character  so 
that  he  may  perform  similar  acts  —  such  is  the  only  desir- 
able kindness.  This,  again,  is  not  merely  the  organic  theory 
of  society;  for  that  theory  excludes  the  possibility  of  merely 
individual  morality.  But  there  is  a  merely  individual 
morality  too.  A  man  owes  certain  things  to  himself;  if  it 
were  not  so,  others  could  not  owe  him  anything.  He  owes 
to  himself  prudence,  and  reflection,  and  a  certain  amount  of 
self -consciousness;  the  cultivation,  so  far  as  it  interferes 
with  no  one  else's  benefits,  of  a  sound  body  and  mind  — 
merely  because  it  is  an  admirable  thing  in  itself.  And  one 
mark  of  this  is  the  unaffected  sensual  pleasure  which  accom- 
panies it.  Also  because  it  gives  pleasure  to  others,  no  doubt; 
but  not  for  that  reason  alone.  Selfishness  itself  is  bad  only 
when  it  excludes  altruism;  and  it  does  not  always  do  so. 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  523 

Men  should  be  free  to  cultivate  themselves  for  their  own 
sakes  as  well  as  to  make  themselves  better  citizens,  friends, 
fathers,  brothers,  etc. ;  where  to  be  any  of  the  latter  is  to  do 
acts  that  are  both  good  in  themselves  and  tend  to  be  re- 
peated by  others.  It  is  a  mistake  to  say,  as  one  often  hears 
it  said,  that  selfishness  is  the  root  of  all  evil.  An  exclusive 
devotion  to  any  one  person  at  the  expense  of  another  is 
equally  wicked.  A  mother's  blind  devotion  to  an  exacting 
child,  or  a  woman's  to  her  faithless  lover,  has  little  admir- 
able about  it;  both  are  socially  pernicious.  The  minute 
this  tendency  to  repetition  is  frustrated,  that  minute  we 
have  moral  evil;  the  act,  beautiful  in  itself,  becomes  ugly 
in  relation  to  others,  and  the  blemish  destroys  its  integrity. 
Also  when  an  act,  beautiful  in  its  effect  upon  others,  tends 
to  dwarf  one's  own  character,  so  that  one  will  not  be  likely 
to  repeat  it,  that  act  loses  moral  worth.  As  the  only  proper 
metaphysical  principles  are  fertile  and  productive  ones,  so 
the  only  proper  ethical  maxims  are  those  which  promote 
conduct  which  promotes  further  conduct,  i.  e.,  those  which 
increase  the  sum- total  of  life;  a  generative  series  which 
produces  itself  indefinitely,  like  the  living  organism. 

Were  we  to  write  a  book  of  ethics,  we  should  begin  by 
saying  that  a  sound  ethics  must  be  based  upon  meta- 
physics; for  we  shall  never  know  how  to  adjust  ourselves 
to  our  great  environment  until  we  know  the  nature  of  that 
environment. 

Our  treatise  has  grown  terribly  lengthy:  we  must  leave 
to  the  reader  (if  we  dare  assume  such  a  being)  the  application 
of  the  mam  principle  to  the  other  issues. 

Free  union  and  fertility  —  these  are  the  watchwords 
which  must  be  the  guide  of  man  as  he  journeys  through 
a  universe  which  is  made  up,  from  beginning  to  end,  of 
dyads. 


524  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

We  may  characterize  our  doctrine  summarily  as  follows: 

(1)  It  maps  reality  as  a  collection  of  dyads,  or  two-in-one 
monads:  if  a  physical  comparison  is  allowed,  of  two-atom 
molecules;  if  a  biological  one,  of  families,  each  of  which  is 
based  upon  the  contrast  of  sex.    It  does  not  at  present  offer 
any  further  chart;   it  is  here  limited  to  the  study  of  the 
microcosm  rather  than  the  macrocosm.    This  is,  of  course, 
a  defect,  and  a  partial  failure  to  fulfil  the  intention  with 
which  we  set  out.    We  here  say  nothing  of  the  objects  of 
religion,  the  categories  of  science.    May  we  be  able  to  do  so 
upon  a  future  occasion!    Nevertheless,  we  believe  that  the 
slight  contribution  which  alone  we  could  exhibit  is  a  gen- 
uine answer  as  far  as  it  goes,  in  that  it  reveals  the  type 
of  explanation  and  is  also  of  utility  in  the  long  run. 

(2)  It  is  absolute  positivism,  because  it  ascribes  no  nega- 
tions to  reality;  negations,  that  is,  in  any  sense  but  other- 
ness.   Exclusion  and  denial  are  totally  ruled  out,  except  in 
application  to  themselves.    If  a  statement  is  true,  the  ex- 
clusion of  that  statement  from  every  universe  of  discourse  is 
excluded.    This  is  the  "  law  of  contradiction  ";  don't  deny 
your  statements.    It  is  only  a  recasting  of  our  main  point; 
exclusion  is  excluded  from  reality.    We  have  used  the  phrase 
"  absolute  positivism  "  also  to  contrast  our  view  with  that 
of  Auguste  Comte ;  the  latter  was  one  of  the  most  negative 
systems  which  it  has  entered  the  mind  of  man  to  devise.    It 
excluded  nearly  everything  in  which  man  is  most  deeply 
interested:     religion    and    the    extra-physical    generally; 
whereas  our  own  works  in  just  the  opposite  direction. 

(3)  Or  one  might  follow  out  the  suggestion  of  the  last 
paragraph  about  negation  and  style  the  treatise  The  Mean- 
ing of  Negation.    For  the  pivot  on  which  we  turned  from  the 
realm  of  eternal  strife  to  what  we  deemed  the  fertile  solution 
was,  the  analysis  of  negation  into  otherness  rather  than 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  525 

removal  of  what  is  negated.  Our  whole  system  rests  upon  the 
proper  interpretation  of  the  negative;  the  most  shadowy  of 
all  concepts,  perhaps,  and  the  least  likely  to  attract  atten- 
tion; and  therefore  just  the  one  where  the  great  root-error 
of  human  thought  would  choose  to  lurk. 

(4)  Lastly,  we  are  driven  to  characterize  the  universe  as 
an  asymmetrical  affair.  Much  has  been  heard,  in  recent 
philosophy,  of  symmetrical  and  asymmetrical  relations; 
we  have  also  described  certain  systems  as  symmetrical  ones, 
others  as  asymmetrical.  This  distinction  we  believe  to  be 
profoundly  important,  particularly  for  practical  applica- 
tions of  our  own  view.  The  ultimate  dyad  (sameness-in- 
difference) is  not  wholly  a  symmetrical  affair;  or  at  least, 
while  in  one  aspect  symmetrical,  in  another  it  is  asymmet- 
rical ;  and  the  latter  though  not  more  real  than  the  former 
yet  plays  a  larger  part.  If  we  call  the  two  elements  of  the 
dyad  A  and  B,  then  A,  the  first  one,  is  the  more  significant 
element.  For  B  is  in  a  sense  dependent  upon  A;  it  is  de- 
fined wholly  by  reference  to  A .  B  is  defined  by  the  words 
"the  same  as  A  "  and  "yet  different  from  A."  A  deserves 
the  name  of  the  first  and  B  of  the  second  member  of  the 
couple;  though  both  are  equally  necessary,  and  though  B 
cannot  be  reduced  wholly  to  terms  of  A ,  yet  A  appears  the 
more  fundamental.  In  fact,  if  we  did  not  add  to  our  account 
this  last  little  touch,  the  distinction  between  A  and  B  would 
evaporate.  They  would  both  be  logically  quite  relative; 
each  one  displaying  no  nameable  quality  which  the  other 
had  not.  But  if  there  is  something  in  A  which  B  has  not  — 
viz.,  a  certain  fundamentality,  then  an  ultimate  difference 
has  been  named  between  them.  They  are  no  longer  inter- 
changeable because  they  are  not  on  the  same  level.  And 
this  difference  of  level,  i.  e.,  of  importance  or  significance, 
pervades  all  the  pairs  of  categories  which  align  themselves 


526  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

with  the  dualistic  scheme.  As  A  is  more  fundamental  than 
B,  so  the  sameness-relation  between  them,  rather  than  their 
diversity,  is  the  carrier  of  the  productiveness  by  which  C 
was  generated.  It  was  the  sameness  between  A  and  B, 
which  alone  enabled  us  to  infer  from  B  to  a  new  entity  C. 
To  be  sure,  the  difference  between  A  and  B  was  necessary 
also,  but  it  gave  of  itself  no  movement  onward,  no  transi- 
tion, no  motion,  so  to  speak,  such  as  resulted  in  the  third 
entity.  And  likewise  of  the  pair  "  universal-individual." 
The  category  of  individual  is  more  fundamental  than  that 
of  universal,  for  by  the  former  (by  two  individuals  related) 
was  the  latter  defined.  So  it  is  with  the  pair  "  cause-effect " : 
the  cause  is  logically  and  temporarily  prior  to  the  effect, 
but  yet  the  effect  is  necessary.  But  here  again  we  must 
content  ourselves  for  the  present  with  a  curtailed  exposition; 
we  pass  at  once  to  a  certain  application  of  fundamental 
importance  which  we  wish  to  make. 

It  is  in  general  true  that  the  principle  of  externality  is 
prior  in  reality  to  that  of  internality.  This  may  be  seen  in 
many  ways.  We  found  in  Chapter  XII  that  it  is  through 
the  principle  of  internality  that  opposition  was  rendered 
possible  in  the  philosophical  field;  although  no  doubt  the 
other  principle  must  cooperate,  in  order  that  opposition  may 
become  actual.  In  the  battle-ground  of  the  subjective  the 
situation  is  the  reverse  of  what  it  is  in  the  kingdom  of  reality. 
What  is  real  is  individual  —  such  has  been  long  a  favourite 
principle  of  philosophers,  from  Aristotle  to  Hegel.  The  rela- 
tions between  real  things,  though  indeed  no  less  real,  are 
secondary  to  the  things.  We  express  this  in  the  category  of 
the  adjective.  The  adjective  is  in  a  clearly  recognizable 
sense  subordinate  to  the  substantive,  the  quality  to  the  sub- 
stance, the  relation  to  the  term.  Reality  needs  both  cate- 
gories, as  does  our  understanding;  but  it  rests  in  the  one, 


THE  CREATIVE  PRINCIPLE  527 

and  moves  by  the  other  in  order  to  attain  that  one.  Now 
in  the  realm  of  social  problems,  the  corollary  is  fairly  ob- 
vious. The  prior  requirement  of  the  successful  solution  of 
those  problems  is  the  establishment  of  a  strong  and  moral 
individuality.  The  reformation  of  society  must  be  built 
upon  that  of  individuals.  We  do  not  say  that  latter  would 
suffice;  it  certainly  would  not.  The  social  sense  is  some- 
thing over  and  above  the  individualistic  motive;  however 
they  may  be  identified  in  division  of  labour  or  other  devices, 
the  one  can  never  be  wholly  submerged  in  the  other.  But 
you  cannot,  by  legislation,  by  material  rewards,  or  by  any 
other  ingenuities,  build  up  a  well-founded  state  while  the 
individuals  have  not  firmly  fixed  good  characters.  A  man 
cannot  be  a  great  publicist  until  his  private  character  is 
incorruptible;  until  he  can  control  his  anger,  his  jealousies, 
his  rivalries,  his  exclusiveness  of  many  sorts.  It  is  possible, 
no  doubt,  for  him  to  do  these  latter  things  while  not  labour- 
ing very  much  in  the  service  of  the  State;  but  even  so,  his 
life  is  a  relatively  meagre  one,  for  it  then  denies,  to  a  large 
extent,  the  social  impulses.  But  the  social  depends  on  the 
individual  more  than  the  individual  upon  the  social.  This 
is  a  truth  which  needs  emphasis  and  reemphasis  in  these 
days  when  the  individual  is  in  danger  of  drowning  in  the 
social  bath.  But  social  reform  not  preceded  by  individual 
self -discipline  is  reform  resting  upon  no  foundation.  For 
this  reason  politics  is  not  quite  so  important  as  religion  and 
morality;  these  being  concerned  primarily  with  individuals. 
"  Seek  ye  first  the  kindgom  of  God  and  His  righteousness," 
said  Jesus;  and  we  of  today  have  almost  forgotten  these 
words.  This  does  not  in  the  least  imply  that  we  should 
neglect  the  interests  of  our  neighbours  and  of  the  State; 
any  more  than  the  love  of  one's  friends  implies  a  hatred  of 
the  rest  of  the  world.  On  the  contrary,  such  a  view,  if 


528  PRODUCTIVE  DUALITY 

correct,  makes  us  the  more  likely  to  adjust  ourselves  to  the 
social  milieu.  And  so  religion  and  morality,  if  properly 
understood,  should  make  one  a  better  citizen.  But  that  does 
not  mean  that  they  are  swallowed  up  in  politics  or  statecraft, 
of  however  exalted  a  sort. 

Every  practical  problem  should,  in  our  belief,  be  met  thus: 
of  the  two  positions  in  conflict,  ascertain  by  empirical 
analysis  which  one  represents  the  principle  of  externality, 
and  which  that  of  internality;  seek  a  solution  which  will 
identify  the  interest  of  each  factor,  yet  so  as  to  leave  room 
for  the  pursuit,  on  occasion,  of  each  one  by  itself;  and 
remember  that  in  this  identification  of  their  interests  that 
one  of  the  contestants  which  stands  for  the  principle  of 
externality  should  claim  priority  in  emphasis  or  in  time. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Absolute    Idealism    or    Absolutism, 

107-108,  31 7  ff.,  423. 
Abstractions,  255  ff.,  341. 
Act  and  potency,  371. 
Actus  purus,  367. 
Adjective,  526. 

Aesthetic  idealism,  115,  145  ff. 
Aesthetic  synthesis,  407  ff. 
Affective  idealism,  145  ff. 
Agreement  in  philosophy,  25  ff. 
Algebra,  510. 

Als  Ob,  Philosophic  des,  165. 
Analysis,  187-188,  238,  287  ff. 
Antinomies,  46, 181  ff.,  300  ff.,  428  ff., 

477  ff- 

Aristocracy,  519  ff. 
Aristotle,  229,  253,  360-361,  372. 
Arithmetic,  510. 
Art,  19,  no,  135-136,  150  ff.,  447- 

448. 

Aspects,  464  ff. 
Asymmetry,  9,  108,  371,  517,  525- 

528. 

Authority,  384  ff. 
Avenarius,  92  ff. 
Axioms,  289,  386. 

Baldwin,  145  ff. 

Balmes,  362. 

Behaviour,  206  ff . 

Being,  375,  508. 

Belly  and  Members,  Fable  of,  21. 

Bergson,  287  ff. 

Berkeley,  42,  44,  46,  61,  62. 

Biology,  176,  206  ff. 


Bosanquet,  225,  328,  332  ff.,  455. 
Bradley,  225,  264,  331,  436,  455. 

Categories,  107,  112,  113,  117  ff.,  414, 


Catholicism,  360  ff.,  439-440. 
Causation,  123,  135,  365  ff.,  374,  400, 

496,  504  ff. 

Centered  responsibility,  517. 
Chance,  239  ff.,  481  ff. 
Change,  236ff.,  300  ff.,  477~479- 
Classicism,  447. 
Common  sense,  348  ff  . 
Completed  infinite,  428  ff.,  462-463, 

477-480. 
Comte,  316,  524. 
Consciousness,  180  ff. 
Content  of  mind,  45. 
Contingent,  377~378. 
Contradiction,  342,  428  ff.     Cf.  An- 

tinomies. 
Counterpart,  413. 
Creation,  370,  401.  493  ff. 
Critical  point,  66,  79,  90,  too,  139, 

195,  201,  218-219,  237,  239,  242, 

282,  304-305,  341,  405,  413- 

Deadlock,  85  ff. 

Deduction,  107,  120  ff.,  1275.,  238, 

495  ff- 

Definition,  70-71,  101-102. 
Democracy,   159,    248,   284,  441  ff., 


Descartes  50-51,  289. 


531 


532 


INDEX 


Destruction,  461. 
Determinism,  239  ff.,  481  ff. 
Dewey,  32,  166,  209-210,  214,  249, 

267  ff. 

Dialectic,  46,  300  ff.,  313  ff.,  454  ff. 
Difference,  455  ff. 
Disagreement,  25  ff. 
Disease,   philosophical,   35-36,   317, 

344,  413  ff- 

Division  of  labour,  517. 
Dogma,  351,3845. 
Dualism,  87,  195,  475  ff.,  493  ff. 
Dyad,  508. 
Dynamic  view,  206  ff. 

Eleatic,  506. 

Emotion,  29. 

Empiricism,  20-21,  511. 

Endless  tilt,  86  ff.,  158,  217,  221,  243, 

342- 

Equal  opportunity,  519. 
Erdmann,  B.,  156. 
Error,  194  ff.,  202-203,  214  ff.,  272- 

273- 

Eternal  past  time,  479. 
Eternal  truths,  479. 
Ethics,  523. 
Exemplars,  380. 
Expectation,  216-217. 
Experimental  method,  283-286. 
External  world,  67  ff.,  80,  159-160, 

380-383. 
Externality    or    External    relations, 

53  ff.,  228  ff.,  330-331,  415  ff- 

Faculties,  262-263. 
Faith,  329,  384  ff. 
Fertility,  496  ff. 
Forces,  261. 
Form,  380. 

Freedom,    238,   358,   376-377,   475. 
481  ff. 


Function,  188-189,  206  ff. 
Fusion  of  externality  and  internality, 
493  ff- 

Genesis,  496  ff. 

Genetic  method,  145  ff. 

God,  302-303,  365  ff. 

Good,  375. 

Government,  27,  166-167,  169-170, 

260-261,  440  ff.,  517  ff. 
Great  objectivism,  172  ff. 
Great  subjectivism,  105  ff. 

Harmony,  135,  407. 
Hegel,  317  ff.,  508-509. 
Herbart,  54,  225,  418. 
Holt,  70,  195  ff. 
Homogeneity  of  space,  511. 
Hume,  499. 

Idea,  as  behaviour,  206  ff. 
Idea,  Platonic,  228,  378-379. 
Idealism,  43,  105  ff. 
Identity,  53-56,  86  ff.,  455  ff. 
Imagination,  148. 
Impressionism,  447. 
Indefinables,  228  ff.,  419. 
Independence,  81-83,  173  ff.,  224  ff. 
Individualism,  440  ff.,  517  ff. 
Individuality,  2345.,  252-253. 
Induction,  499. 
Industry,  137. 
Infinite,  430,  510. 
Infinite  regress,  428  ff. 
Infinitesimal,  480-481,  507. 
Institutions,  260. 
Intellectualism,  222  ff. 
Interaction,  98. 

Interdependence,  325  ff.,  474-475. 
Internality    or    Internal    relations, 

52-57,  306,  330,  415  ff. 
Introjection,  96. 
Introspection,  183-187. 


INDEX 


533 


Intuition,  287  ff. 

Isolation  of  problems,  424-426. 

James,  33,  40,  95,  98-99,  213-214, 


Jesus,  5,  388,  393,  394,  398,  402,  527. 
Judgment,  53,  155-156,  436. 

Kant,  45-49,  i°7  ff-,  *93,  355-359, 

383,  429  ff. 
Knowledge,  7  ff  . 

Law,  118  ff.,  138,  182  ff.,  239  ff.,  259- 

260,  499,  505. 
Leibnitz,  407-410,  505. 
Life,  509. 

Marbe,  155-156. 

Materialism,  218-220. 

Mathematics,  227. 

Memory,  190,  201,  212,  386-387. 

Metaphysics,  20,  523. 

Mind,  defined,  172  ff. 

Miracles,  395. 

Monads,  508. 

Monism,  58,  324,  508. 

Montague,  189  ff  . 

Moore,  A.  W.,  210-211,  269  ff.,  281. 

Moore,  G.  E.,  179,  205. 

Morality,  27-28,  138,  356,  448,  522- 

523- 

Motion,  301. 
Miinsterberg,  127  ff. 
Music,  447-448. 

Mystery  of  Being,  299-300,  312-313. 
Mysticism,  287  ff  . 


Natorp, 
Nature,  159-161. 
Needs  of  men,  7  ff  . 
Negation,  471,  524-525- 
Negative  judgment,  473. 
Nelson,  155. 


Newton's  first  law  of  motion,  499. 
Nominalism,  51,  248. 
Nothing,  299,  312,  508. 
Novelty,  495  ff  . 
Null-class,  312. 
Number,  510. 

Objectivism,  67  ff  . 
One,  302-303,  375-376. 
Opposition,  414  ff.,  472. 
Optimism,  3. 
Otherness,  472. 
Over-will,  i28ff. 

Panaceas,  5. 

Pancalism,  115,  i46ff. 

Pantheism,  365-367. 

Parallelism,  98. 

Past  time,  63-64. 

Personality,  109,  134. 

Philosophy,  12  ff.,  231!.,  i66ff.,  516- 

5i7. 

Plato,  222  ff.,  360,  518. 
Plotinus,  302-303. 
Pluralism,  418-420. 
Political  parties,  440,  520. 
Positivism,  316,  524. 
Possible  alternatives,  484-490. 
Post-impressionism,  447. 
Postulate,  328,  356-357. 
Potency  or  Potentiality,  77  ff  .,  189  ff. 


Practical  or  Practice,  7ff.,  166-170, 

277-279,  346  ff.,  437  ff-,  5i3  ff- 
Pragmatism,  177,  206  ff.,  2670*. 
Presentative  theory,  86  ff.,  174. 
Primary  qualities,  61. 
Probability,  485  ff  . 
Problem,  the  supreme,  4  ff  . 
Progress,  3,  34. 
Psychical,  denned,  190  ff  . 
Psychologismus,  155. 
Psychology,  113. 


534 


INDEX 


Pure  experience,  92  ff. 
Purpose,  207. 

Radical  empiricism,  243  ff. 

Rationalism,  115,  222. 

Rationalistic  synthesis,  317  ff. 

Realism,  67,  172,  380-383. 

Reason  vs.  dogma,  398  ff. 

Reid,  354,  392. 

Relation,  see  Externality  and  Inter- 

nality. 

Relativism,  505. 
Religion,  5,  28,  iio-m,  138,  359  ff., 

449. 
Representative  theory  of  knowledge, 

86,  198-199. 
Revelation,  384  ff. 
Rickert,  115. 
Romanticism,  447. 
Royce,  108,  158,  209,  225,  253-254, 

335-336,  339- 
Russell,  B.,  179,  215,  229,  235. 

Sameness,  331-332,  455  ff- 

Santayana, 25. 

Schelling,  145. 

Schiller,  214. 

Schopenhauer,  42,  183,  410-411. 

Schroeder,  312. 

Science,  5,6, 19, 110,176-177,424-426. 

Secondary  qualities,  59-61, 196, 381. 

Selfishness,  522-523. 

Self-repeater,  495  ff. 

Series,  120-121. 

Sex,  506. 

Similarity,  187. 

Singer,  211. 

Skepticism,  427  ff. 

Social  or  Society,  109,  158  ff.,  273, 

440  ff.,  513  ff. 
Socipsism,  158. 
Solipsism,  72-76. 
Space,  123,  126,  130,  510-511. 


Spiritualism,  220,  291. 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  360  ff . 
Static,  212,  224  ff. 
Stimuli,  206. 
Subjectivism,  38  ff. 
Substance,  iSoff.,  206,  526. 
Symmetry,  108. 
Synthesis,  317!?. 

Temperament,  31-32,  39-40. 

Term  and  relation,  526-527. 

Theism,  365-367. 

Theology,  370. 

Theory,  7  ff.,  270-282. 

Thing  and  qualities,  434~435,  526. 

Thing-in-itself,  87,  165,  355. 

Thomism,  360  ff. 

Thought,  209,  453-454- 

Time,  123,  131,  294  ff.,  477  ff-,  5I5- 

Titchener,  156. 

Transcendental  deduction,  1 1 7  ff . 

Transcendentalism,  fault  of,  139  ff., 

249. 

Truth,  214-215,  272-273,  375. 
Types,  36, 38-39. 

Uniformity  of  Nature,  499. 
Unitarianism,  400,  402-403,  439. 
Universal  mind,   see    Great   subjec- 
tivism. 
Universals,  117  ff.,  236,  250  ff.,  510. 

Vaihinger,  165. 
Values,  127  ff.,  146  ff. 
Voluntarism,  1275. 

Walker,  362,  364. 
Ward,  96-97,  372. 
Wells,  26. 
Why  vs.  How,  512. 
Will,  126  ff.,  513. 
Will-to-believe,  277-278. 

Zeno,  46,  300  ff.,  428  ff. 


p 

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